Wyoming

TexasTowelie

(116,799 posts) Sun Jun 11, 2017, 02:48 AM Jun 2017

Coal Jobs Return To Wyoming

The Gillette Workforce Center had a front row seat for the town’s coal woes.

The office has cream-colored walls, decorated with motivational posters and pictures of coal mines. Vermona Petersen is the manager of the center, which helps people find a new job.

“At the height of the layoffs last year, we were seeing between 250 and 300 people a day,” she said.

Wyoming coal mines laid off more than 450 workers last March amid financial troubles exacerbated by low natural gas prices and debt.

Read more: http://wyomingpublicmedia.org/post/coal-jobs-return-wyoming

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Coal Jobs Return To Wyoming (Original Post) TexasTowelie Jun 2017 OP

This article is bizarre. The numbers are weird. It says that a total of 450 coal workers were Squinch Jun 2017 #1

Squinch

(52,745 posts)

1. This article is bizarre. The numbers are weird. It says that a total of 450 coal workers were

Reply to TexasTowelie (Original post)

Sun Jun 11, 2017, 08:05 AM

Jun 2017

were laid off last year, but they were getting 250 to 300 people coming through the employment finding service PER DAY.

This means that the laid off coal workers must have been only a tiny fraction of the total unemployed.

They mention oil and gas, but I'd wager money that many of the other lost jobs were in retail, and that the number of lost retail jobs dwarfed the number of lost coal jobs. And the number of oil and gas jobs. But no one is saying boo about all those other industries that are not coming back.

Where all this coal press comes from and why people are making it a talking point while ignoring the retail crash is beyond me.

Then there's the mayor of a town that is dependent on coal and oil wishing and hoping that those two industries will provide an "evened out" economy for her town, when she has to know that will never happen, and yet she's not mentioning any plans for any other economic plans for her town that might be an actual solution to their problem.

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