[meatloaf]

County highway departments lost CDL drivers and equipment operators to the oil field.

[Tammy8]

My step son is an equipment operator, for a while construction was slow but now he is getting well again. He has no desire to go work in the oil patch, did that in his younger days when he was single. Thanks to all the work in the oil patch he was able to land a great job in a place he and his wife have wanted to live for a while.

It is getting hard to fill jobs that require a CDL or any job related to oil field work for the lower paying jobs like school bus drivers. I am sure this will work itself out, some people have come out of retirement to fill such jobs in my area until new employees can be found.

I cannot fault the workers, my step son left what was a steady but low paying job for the kind of work he does- but who would not want to gain better employment? This will also be an incentive for on the job training for younger people- which has been almost non-existent when workers were plentiful.

[redhead]

In Valdez, AK, during pipeline construction in the 70s, same thing happened. Local business owners couldn't keep help because their employees all decided to go to "work on the Slope," or "across the Bay, for all that big money." A cost-plus project doesn't care about expenses. Hubby saw his opportunity and left the big money across the bay to go to work in a very highly paid position for a local contractor.

Boom and bust. Bakken the same. My son worked for an oilfield contractor in Minot ND, then went into business for himself as a fleet mechanic. Sometimes they had $60,000 months. Then the price dropped out of oil, and it took only 30 days when the boom busted before he was done: all contracts cancelled without notice, leaving him bankrupt and penniless, owing thousands on parts orders for trucks that would never be repaired.