Watching what is happening with North Dakota’s oil boom is a lesson in market economics. There is a great demand for workers, and that means high-paying oil jobs are plentiful. December’s unemployment rate was a mere 3.2 percent. With the supply of workers low, pay for jobs in ancillary industries is also going up. With all the new people comes a demand for products and services, and the towns are predictably struggling to keep up, both in the public and private sector. So while much of the rest of the U.S. struggles to pay unemployment benefits and lure job creators through government-based incentives and credits, North Dakota is leaving everyone else in the dust by letting industry thrive and workers reap the benefits.
The Brevigs of the world are flocking to North Dakota in droves, modern frontiersmen transforming this recently dying flyover land into the fastest-growing state in the nation, according to the Census Bureau. Storefront signs scream “now hiring.” Pickups and semis jam long stretches of two-lane highways. Backhoes claw the ground even in frozen January. Recreational vehicles occupy former farm fields next to row upon row of box-like modular living pods.
In Williston, the epicenter of the growth, the local hospital opened a new birthing center, workers are building a giant new rec center and students are overflowing in a school that once sat empty. Civic leaders have been approving building permits and hiring police and teachers and nearly every kind of government worker.
I prefer the problems associated with economic growth and prosperity over those associated with economic decline and misery.
