Smack dab in the center of Illinois, Mattoon has seen its population slowly drop from about 19,700 in 1970 to about 17,000 today. Along the way, it has seen big employers and manufacturers close up shop and move, including a General Electric lighting plant in 2017 and LSC Communication's printing operation in 2020.“It is an exciting time right now for us. We are going to see things happen in the next couple of years that don’t come around every 50 years,” Hall said.
“We wanted to bring people to Mattoon to live that don’t want to live in a metropolitan area,” Hall said. “The mechanism for us is here. We’re excited about whats going on right now.” Steven Strauss, the John L. Weinberg/Goldman Sachs Visiting Professor at Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs, stressed that if work from home fades, smaller towns won’t have much luck attracting those workers. But if 5% to 10% of workers stay permanently remote“I am relatively bullish that work from anywhere is here to stay,” Strauss said. “The last few years have been a relatively hot labor market for knowledge workers.
Now, people looking for affordability are leaving expensive cities like Los Angeles in favor of Phoenix, or cheaper states like Idaho. And while he sees young people moving back to big cities, he said families and older workers tired of the costs and looking for more space will head elsewhere.
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