By: Nand Arora

Like many other immigrants, I came to America with a few dollars in my pocket, and a dream. Over the next several years, my wife and I, through hard work, dedication, and excellent education, made it to the top two percent of the country’s income earners. In the process, we also sponsored and brought our immediate families and helped improve their lives. What is even more satisfying is the fact that we were able to help many fellow Americans in our journey, myself as a business executive and a professor and my wife as a physician.

But this is not about our family’s journey or our success.

Nearly 60 percent of Americans live in the same state they were born, and they are staying put more than they have in decades. Migration in the U.S. between 2010 and 2011 was the lowest for any year since the census bureau started collecting statistics on migration back in 1948. The state with the lowest mobility was Louisiana (78.8 percent), followed by Michigan (76.6 percent), Ohio (75.1 percent) and Pennsylvania (74.0 percent).

My wife and I have moved to four different states thus far during our careers.

According to the Pew Research Center, the proportion of young adults living at home nearly doubled between 1980 and 2008. The likelihood of someone in their twenties moving to another state has dropped well over 40 percent since the 1980s.

Back in the 1980s, 80 percent of 18-year olds received their driver licenses, according to a study by researchers at the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute. By 2008, that number had dropped to 65 percent. Perhaps young people are too

happy at home checking Facebook. This may mean safer roads, but it also means a less vibrant economy.

This is not a healthy trend in the face of a high national unemployment rate of 8.2% and a foreclosure rate that should drive Americans to move in search of better opportunities. For example, the young Nevadans, facing chronically the highest unemployment rate, currently at 11.6%, can hop on a bus for a few dollars, and move to North Dakota, with nation’s lowest unemployment rate of 2.9%.

Education plays a major role in labor mobility. College graduates have the highest mobility rate of all, workers with a community college education are less mobile, high school graduates even less, and high school dropouts come at the bottom of the list.  Education has other benefits as well. In a pattern that is part education and part family background, college graduates tend to have longer life expectancies, higher household incomes, lower divorce rates, and fewer single-parent families than those with less education.

In earlier times, it was possible for an average American worker with average skills, doing an average job,   to work in a factory or other blue collar job to make an average, or even decent living without higher education. In today’s highly competitive, technology driven, globalized world, the American Dream is still possible, but average is a thing of the past, possibly, forever.