Best locations to be out of a job: probably not Boise

Lane Wallace who blogs writes for The Atlantic wrote an interesting piece about the best places to be unemployed. I’ve long held that culture is a huge determining factor in the level of entrepreneurial activity. Moving from Redmond, WA to Boise, ID, I noticed a pronounced difference in the start-up culture here. In the Seattle area, everyone I knew wanted to get a job at Microsoft or Amazon, make some money, get some skills, meet some people, and then go start their own company. In Boise, everyone wants to get on at Micron or HP, get some health benefits and start a family. Why is that? It’s culture. Lane Wallace explains:

When I first quit my corporate job and set out to be a self-employed writer, I was living in a predominantly blue-collar community in Minnesota. The cost of living was wonderfully low. But getting hit with “when are you going to get a job?” from everyone I met was exhausting. Tell someone in New York or LA that you’re a writer, or tell someone in Silicon Valley that you’re starting your own company, and the response is far more likely to be, “Wow! That’s great! Tell me all about it!” And, quite possibly, the conversation will conclude with, “you know who you might want to talk to …” Being laid off in New York or LA or Silicon Valley just means you’ve joined a well-populated club with a long and cherished tradition. Even if you don’t want to stay in that club forever, you don’t have to be embarrassed to be a part of it. That counts for a lot.

Boise too is a tough town to be out of job in. Once out of a job at HP or Micron, there aren’t a whole lot of other options. My anecdotal evidence from working at the University says that we see a lot of folks changing careers after a layoff (going from sales to social work . . . ). Or, people uproot and move their families to Salt Lake, Portland, Seattle, or Phoenix. And it seems from lingering around the start-up community for a few years now that you see a lot of consultants and people remaining self-employed, but not developing “companies” that could grow to 50, 100, or 1,000 employees.

Lane Wallace’s piece was based upon a New York Times article. I commend them both.