Martin Feldstein (1997, p. 36) claims that workers within the US are more geographically mobile than say within Germany. I had known that US workers were mobile. But one sentence of his seems a bit hyperbolic:
While Americans don't hesitate to move from Ohio and Massachusetts to Arizona and California, Germans are loathe to leave one part of Germany for another.
Boston to say San Francisco (about 5,000km) is about seven times the distance from Hamburg to Munich (about 700km). It would seem surprising that Americans don't hesitate to move from one end of their country to another, while Germans are loathe to do so.
Of course there are many ways this could be measured. But here is my attempt at a question that is in principle answerable:
Each year, what percentages of US and German workers relocate to a different state (within the same country) for work? Is the figure for the US greater than that for Germany?
P.S. Feldstein was writing in 1997 but I imagine the numbers do not differ very greatly between now and then--correct me if I'm wrong.