Jobs In Non-Oil Counties Are Probably Oil Jobs Too

For decades North Dakota?s political leadership dumped hundreds of millions of dollars into ?economic development.? They created special tax deals for certain businesses and industries. They dumped money into the state?s universities, and hired politically well-connected advertising agencies to run flashy campaigns touting the state?s tourism industry They created entire branches of the government ? most notably the Commerce Department ? whose goal was to grow and diversify the state?s economy.

The result wasn?t a lot of success. These leaders might point to the state?s unemployment rate, which usually stays pretty low, but that has more to do with the fact that when people can?t find a job in North Dakota they tend to leave the state. Until the oil boom came along, the state?s population was stagnating if not trending down.

But then the oil boom happened. The state has a blizzard of job openings, and people from all over the country are moving in to fill them. But after decades of congratulating themselves for sound economic policy, the politicians don?t want the thing that put North Dakota on the map to be just the fluke of having oil under the western part of the state.

They want the credit. Which is why we keep seeing article after article about this one wherein the politicians tout jobs in counties without oil. They think this is evidence that it?s not just the oil boom. They think this is evidence of their special economic development deals and policies.

This is silliness.

To say that job growth in non-oil counties in North Dakota has nothing to do with the oil boom is absurd. One need not study the oil boom long to see just how many construction, trucking and service businesses working in the west are based out of places like Bismarck, Fargo and Grand Forks.

Case in point: Burleigh County is not an oil county, but could anyone really argue that Bismarck and surrounding areas haven?t been impacted, economically, by the oil boom? And remember, we?re not just talking about jobs in the oil industry. We?re talking about jobs at all the restaurants and hotels and stores that opened or expanded because of the oil boom.

The one drawback of the oil boom, as I see it, is that the politicians are claiming a lot of economic success for policies that really have nothing to do with North Dakota?s economic success.

Tags: bakken, jack dalrymple, North Dakota News, oil

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