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Commission's Houston office. Their fortunes will depend on the skills they bring. Lyle Cousins, 39, a truck driver from Goodrich, Mich., had no problem. "I came to Houston on a Friday, got my Texas driver's license on Monday and started work on Tuesday," says Cousins, whose living-room couch has been occupied ever since by friends and relatives in town to find a job.
Dennis Tibbitt, 39, a former Ford employee, and his wife Janet, 33, also fared well. Repeatedly out of work in Detroit, Dennis concluded that "there were only three things you could do: get out, starve or turn criminal." He got out, and found a bus-driving job in Houston in a matter of weeks. Says Janet, who found an illustrator's job in three days: "Up there, things are happening that you cannot control. Here I feel secure."
For others, especially those trained for specific auto-related jobs, the transition to the South is more difficult. "Many have skills that don't fit here," says Collins. An automotive machinist used to pushing buttons on an assembly line is not trained for the complicated work done by oil-industry machinists. White-collar workers also face problems. Detroit's Wade Cook, 48, a former railroad employee with 16 years of management experience, has sent scores of resumes to the Sunbelt without result. The difficulty, explains University of Houston Sociologist William Simon, is that the Texas economy is highly technical at the upper end and menial at the lower end, without much in between. The newcomers, he says, "cannot articulate with our economy. A lot of them are obsolete people from an obsolete environment, with obsolete skills."
For those with skills that transfer, the adjustment can also be difficult. George Duden, 36, formerly at Chrysler, likes his new job as an electrical engineer with Bell Helicopter in Fort Worth. But as is often the case with those who leave the unionized North, he took a cut in pay and benefits—partly offset by lower taxes. Texas living, says his wife Susan, 29, is expensive, and their son "misses fishing in the Michigan lakes." Though Texans are friendly, Duden notes, "Amy Vanderbilt never got west of the Mississippi. There are rough edges down here."
The Horkenbachs of Royal Oak, Mich., agree. "We hated it," says Renette, 31, of her family's seven-month, $7,000 experiment in Sunbelt living. In Houston, her firefighter husband "had to pay extra to get us on his health insurance," their utility bills were "exorbitant," and Yankees were unpopular. So when Robert Horkenbach was offered his old job back in Royal Oak, he took it. "No way" will they again leave their familiar Michigan turf, says Renette—even though Robert again faces a familiar Michigan layoff. —By Claudia Wallis. Reported by Christopher Redman/Detroit and Robert C. Wurnrtstedt/Houston