Williston, ND -- (SBWIRE) -- 08/17/2012 -- According to newly-released statistics, the unemployment rate in North Dakota has dropped to just 3 percent. Although many other parts of the country are still recovering from the recession, workers who are looking for jobs in North Dakota are finding some lucrative positions in the oil industry.
In fact, because of the North Dakota oil boom, the state’s economy is shooting through the roof. Business owners everywhere are desperately searching for workers of all skill levels, and even an unskilled restaurant server can make upwards of $25 an hour working full-time and even overtime.
Although this might sound like a fantasy, this is the everyday reality in the state of North Dakota where, unlike the rest of the country, rather than a shortage of jobs there is a shortage of people to fill them.
In late 2008, while the rest of the country was experiencing one of the worst financial catastrophes in recent history, a quiet economic revolution was taking place in humble North Dakota. The revolution was centered around what is known as the Bakken formation, a geologic rock formation that is literally soaked through with valuable oil.
Although the Bakken formation was known to geologists as early as the 1970s, it was not until recently that a newly developed mining technique known as hydraulic fracturing—or “fracking”—in combination with the skyrocketing price of oil, made it economically profitable to exploit the mass amount of oil embedded in these rocks. Since then production has exploded to over half a million barrels a day, and North Dakota is now producing more oil than it even has capacity to ship out.
With economic booms come, of course, jobs. With masses of people flooding to fill jobs related to oil exploration and extraction, unemployment in North Dakota has plummeted to the 3 percent level. With so many people moving out of the non-oil labor market into high-paying oil and gas jobs, local businesses—which have also been rapidly expanding due to the oil boom—have been experiencing serious trouble in filling non-oil related jobs.
As a result of the flood of newcomers to fill both high-paying oil jobs and desperately needed low-skill jobs, the housing market has also rapidly expanded. Oil companies as well as individuals have snapped up mass amounts of real estate in the form of houses and apartment buildings, making it extremely difficult and expensive to acquire real estate during this North Dakota oil boom.
Despite the increased cost of rent, it should be obvious to anyone the massive and widely unknown opportunities that are available for oil and gas industry jobs in North Dakota.
About North Dakota Oil and Gas Jobs
The website was started in December 2011 and provides news, information, facts and daily job postings in relations to the oil boom in North Dakota. For more information, please visit http://oilnorthdakota.com