Psst! Wanna job? There's a place in the United States that actually can't get enough people to hire.
The catch? You have to live in North Dakota ... kidding! Actually its a bit worse: you have to live in camps in North Dakota ;)
Perhaps the state didn't get the memo that we're in the middle of the Great Recession, or that the country is neck-deep in unemployment, but thanks to its oil fields, North Dakota is flush with cash and booming with jobs.
School-bus driver Barb Russell heard good money could be made in the oil fields of North Dakota, so she packed a bag, locked her Farmington, Minn., home and headed west last month. She tripled her income.
She rose every morning at 3 o'clock in September to bus Halliburton workers to drilling rigs in a place where trucks roar nonstop and everybody who wants a job has one.
Finding somewhere to lay your head is another matter. Russell, 60, lives in one of many dormitory-style "man camps" that help house an influx of an estimated 35,000 workers.
"I wish 'em the best on getting housing for everybody, especially with winter coming," said Russell, who in her pink cap stands out among the men. "I'd hate to see people sleeping in their cars."
There's no other place like it in America.
If I was unemployed, I wouldn't think twice about picking up and moving to North Dakota for a job.
I'll be spending the winter sleeping in my pickup truck camper, though. No housing to be had, and my new employer doesn't have any slots at the "man camps."
"The Bank of North Dakota — the nation's only state-owned bank — was the brainchild of a failed flax farmer and one-time Socialist Party organizer.
But officials in Washington and other states wonder if it is helping North Dakota sail through the recession.
Six Washington state House Democrats have introduced a bill that would authorize creation of a state-owned bank. Gubernatorial candidates in Florida and Oregon have pushed the same. A report to a Vermont House committee last month said the idea had "considerable merit."..."
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2011099461_statebank17.html