Wal-mart wages in boom town

[packman]

I suppose it is location, location, location - and the idea of not having a pool of desperate people to pick and choose from:

A job board in Williston, North Dakota an oil boom town:

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[yeoman6987]

1. Damn!

North Dakota is smoking hot! All the states should be like this. What are the rest of us doing wrong? Seriously what is going on there and why is it so good? They must have a good Democratic base or something. Repugs would never allow this to happen.

[Brickbat]

2. ROFLMAO.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

3. It helps to have oil under your ground.

[yeoman6987]

4. Alaska and Texas do, but you don't see this

Type of success.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

5. The difference is that the NDak oil is a new discovery.

The oil in Alaska and Texas has been drilled for decades. The North Dakota oil fields are just being developed now and there is a huge demand for workers that are no longer necessary in the well-established oil fields elsewhere. Unfortunately, some towns in NDak, like Williston, are turning into the wild west, complete with a lot of saloons and brothels. Because of the rapid growth in the oil industry there, housing is difficult to get and expensive if you do find it. The "high" Wal-Mart wages shown in the OP are actually not all that high for that area because there is such an enormous demand for all kinds of workers - you can easily get a job doing something if you go there, but the living conditions aren't especially good.