WSJ What’s News - America’s Stalled Mobility is Dragging on the Economy

Episode Date: August 18, 2025

A.M. Edition for Aug 18. Americans are moving and switching jobs at much lower rates than before. WSJ reporter Konrad Putzier says that’s hurting the country’s trademark dynamism, and the economy. Plus, Brussels Bureau Chief Dan Michaels breaks down what to expect from today’s high-stakes Oval Office meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, European leaders and President Trump. And, a group led by one of the country’s biggest hotel owners is nearing a deal to take Soho House private. Azhar Sukri hosts. Sign up for the WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Get to Toronto's main venues like Budweiser Stage and the new Roger Stadium with Go Transit. Thanks to Go Transit's special online e-ticket fairs, a $10 one-day weekend pass offers unlimited travel on any weekend day or holiday anywhere along the Go Network. And the weekday group passes offer the same weekday travel flexibility across the network, starting at $30 for two people and up to $60 for a group of five. Buy your online go pass ahead of the show at go-transit.com slash tickets. Ukraine's President Zelensky land in Washington, once again looking for security guarantees from President Trump. It's necessary to ceasefire and work quickly on a final deal. We'll talk about it in Washington. Putin does not want to stop the killing, but he must do it. Plus a labor dispute grounds air Canada, stranding thousands of passengers globally.

And Americans are moving to new homes and new cities at around the lowest rate on record. We'll look at what that means for the U.S. economy. It's Monday, August 18th. I'm Azhar Sukri for the Wall Street Journal. Here is the AM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today. Ukraine's future seems no clearer this morning after President Trump rolled out the red carpet for his Russian counter.

counterpart, Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday. Ukrainian president of Vladimir Zelensky will be in Washington for a high-stakes meeting with Trump later today, accompanied by a contingent of European and NATO allies. Zelensky will be hoping to get some reassurance from Trump over U.S. security guarantees for his country, the same topic he pressed Trump for earlier this year, which led to an on-camera a confrontation and Zelensky being asked to leave the White House. Of all the issues Putin has set out as conditions for peace, the Russian leader's territorial demands will be the hardest for Zelensky to accept.

Here he is in Brussels yesterday. The constitution of Ukraine makes it impossible, impossible to give up territory or trade land. Since the territorial issue is so important, it should be discussed only by the leaders of Ukraine and Russia at the trilateral, Ukraine, United States, Russia. So far, Russia gives no sign that trilateral will happen. And if Russia refuses, then new sanctions must follow. Speaking on Fox News Sunday, White House Special Envoy Steve Whitkoff laid out the U.S.'s vision of what lies ahead. As mediators, we were at this summit to advance the Ukrainian position, and we did that. And we did it

successfully. Now it's for us to drill down on the granular details of exactly what the Ukrainians need to give them a sense of security in the future and by the way what the Europeans need as well. And we were fully committed to be there for that purpose. The journal's Brussels Bureau Chief Dan Michaels has been following the talks and joins me now. Dan, President Trump has had a shifting position on how to end the war and posted on social media ahead of the talks saying it's on Zelensky to end the war or continue fighting. But listening to Whitkoff there, are we any clearer on what the U.S. and European sides will bring to the table later on? Security guarantees are one of, I'd say, two critical issues. So on security guarantees,

the question is, what exactly would the U.S. do? What do those security guarantees look like? European countries, including Great Britain and France, have said they would be willing to put soldiers into Ukraine to enforce some kind of ceasefire. The U.S. doesn't seem ready to do that, but there are a lot of things it could do, and what the choices the U.S. make on that front are critical. It could be everything from transportation of troops, provision of weapons and intelligence systems. It could be monitoring a ceasefire either with satellites, with drones, or something more active. So what the U.S. chooses to bring to bear is very much an open question. And the other issue is really what on the ground is up for negotiations in terms of territory.

And that's what Putin is pushing and the Ukrainians are pushing back on. Right. So on that front, from what we've seen so far, what are the possible endings for this war? It seems that what Putin is pushing for is for Ukraine to surrender territory that Russia has not been able to take on the battlefield. They haven't been able to do it with guns and with bombs, so now he wants to do it at the negotiating table. And Zelensky is taking a very strong position against that, backed up by the European leaders who say that territory should not be changed by force and that changes to either Ukrainian or Russian territory should only be done through negotiations, not in war, and that was the position that Trump seemed to take last week, but this week

it's not clear what his position on that is, and he seems to be putting pressure on Zelensky to come to the table and make a deal potentially on Russia's terms. It's Brussels, Bureau Chief Dan Michaels. Thank you so much. Good to be with you. More travel disruptions could be ahead for Air Canada passengers today after the Union representing the airline's 10,000 flight attendants said it would defy the Canadian government's return to work order and continue its strike for another day. The union said it'll request that a judge block Ottawa's order that imposed binding arbitration to resolve a labour dispute

between the union and the carrier, in part over pay. Air Canada transports roughly 130,000 passengers a day and operates nearly 200 flights daily to the US. The airline said yesterday it intends to resume flights as of this evening. However, the union said it remains on strike until its bid is heard. And we are exclusively reporting that a group of investors led by one of the country's biggest hotel owners is nearing a deal to take Soho House private, ending a month's long contest over the fate of the members' club operator. The group led by New York-based MCR hotels is expected to pay around $9,000. dollars a share for the company's outstanding public stock, valuing Soho House at around

$1.8 billion, excluding debt. Billionaire Ron Burkle, the current controlling shareholder, is expected to roll over his stake alongside others. Investment giant Apollo global management was also central to the deal, which could be announced as soon as today. Coming up, we'll tell you about how a slowdown in job switching and moving is stalling American's mobility with big economic consequences for everyone. That story after the break. What did your ancestors really do all day? Beyond names, what were their lives like? With

Ancestry's global historical records, you can discover incredible stories about how your ancestors lived and worked. And for a limited time, you can explore select occupation records for free. Imagine finding your great-grandfather's RCMP records or discovering your ancestors' names. in the UK and Ireland Nursing Register. Don't miss out. Free access ends August 24th. Visit Ancestry.ca for more details. Terms apply. Now, if you feel like your options for getting a new home or job are limited, you're probably not alone. Americans are moving to new homes and cities at around the lowest rates on record. Companies have fewer roles for entry-level workers trying to launch.

their careers and workers who do have jobs are hanging on to them. Economics reporter Conrad Putsia says that's leading some analysts to question the future of the country's trademark economic dynamism. Conrad firstly explain what is happening in the housing market and the job market and why they're interlinked. Yeah, so there are really three things that are happening at the same time that are all connected. First off, people aren't really switching jobs. They're not getting hired.

They're not getting laid off. Then you have the housing market being completely frozen. People aren't buying houses and not selling houses. It's really at some of the lowest rates we've seen in decades. And then finally, people aren't moving. They're not moving new cities. They're not moving to new states at nearly the same rate that they used to. So those trends are all connected.

And it's really a very startling phenomenon because we think of America as this very dynamic place, right? Compared to countries like Spain, Italy, it's always been easier to get a job. And for better or worse, it's also been easier to get fired to lose your job. and it's always been easy to move long distances. And this mobility, this ability of people to just move around, switch jobs, buy and sell houses, it's really defined the American economy for a really long time, and it's been a big source of its strengths. And now we've seen that weaken. So all this begs the question, Conrad, as to why?

Why are we seeing all of this now? So the long-term trend is this decline in mobility that we've seen for decades. So we have fewer people moving and fewer people. switching jobs gradually each decade. And no one knows exactly why that is. The most convincing theories that we've heard are just an aging population, right? There's fewer young people as a share of the population. And if you're older, you're just more settled. You're less likely to move. You're less likely to want to switch jobs. Another factor that we think plays an important role is that there are now more households with two wage earners than there were, say, in the 1960s. And what that

means is if two people in your family work, it makes it harder to move somewhere else, right? Because say, one parent gets a job in a different city, but the other parent has a job in the city that they're already in that really complicates things, right, and might make you decide to not take that job up somewhere else. But on top of those fundamental long-running trends, we have everything that's been gone on in the last two years, which is this incredible surge in interest rates, which have made the housing market really unaffordable and have made it really hard to sell your house or buy your house. High interest rates have also hurt hiring. They're weighing on companies. They make it more expensive to run your business. And then on top of that, you have all this economic

uncertainty. No one really knows where the economy is heading. No one still really knows where tariffs are going to end up and what they mean. And so a lot of companies are just sitting tight. So what are the consequences of these trends, both for individuals and the economy as a whole? This decline in dynamism has really economic consequences. The really obvious one is that it creates this divide between winners and losers, between the people who have a job, between the people who have a house, and between the people who don't have a job and can't find one and don't have a house and can't afford to buy one because mortgage rates are incredibly high. And the risk there is that this divide persists and becomes stronger. And there's some research that suggests that if people

don't get a good job after graduating from college pretty quickly, they often fall behind for good. And even 10 years later, they still won't recover fully economically from falling behind so soon. And then just from a pure economic productivity standpoint, it's a really big deal because in a successful economy, you want everyone to be where their talents are best used. So think of it from a worker's perspective. You're in a city where there aren't many good jobs and you could maybe move to San Francisco where there's lots of job openings, for example. But if you can't do that for a number of reasons, because, for example, the housing there is, expensive and you can't sell your own house, that means you can't take better jobs and you make less money and you spend less money and that hurts the economy. And the same from a company's

perspective. If you have a bunch of job openings, but you can't get people to actually move to your location, that means you produce less and you make less money and in turn, you know, you pay less in taxes and you hire fewer people. So this lack of mobility really ripples to the economy and the longer it persists, the more it hurts growth. Economics reporter Conrad Putsia, thank you so much. That's really interesting. Thanks for having me. And that's it for what's news for this Monday morning. Today's show was produced by Kate Bullivant and Caitlin McCabe.

Our supervising producer was Daniel Bark. I'm Azhar Sukhri for the Wall Street Journal. We'll be back tonight with a new show. Until then, thanks for listening. Thank you.