Let’s Talk Coal Jobs

Nikos Tsafos
Jul 20, 2017 · 3 min read

The refrain is familiar. Trump says he will bring back coal jobs. The experts disagree: coal is not coming back; plus, there aren’t that many jobs in coal mining to begin with; and renewable energy is the future anyway. These objections are all true — but also somewhat irrelevant. In my mind, a better debate on coal ought to keep in mind three things.

Photo from Clifford Krauss and Michael Corkerynov, “A Bleak Outlook for Trump’s Promises to Coal Miners,” New York Times, November 19, 2016.

First, direct jobs are only one way to measure an industry’s impact. Google employed 72 thousand people worldwide at year-end 2016 — a tiny fraction of the 140-odd million people employed in the United States. But surely Google’s economic footprint is much greater than that.

Or take railroads. Rail transport employs about 200 thousand people — again, a small number relatively speaking. But can you imagine America without rail? (By the way, a third of what gets transported by rail is coal — another reason why direct jobs in coal mining are only part of the story.)

Coal, of course, powered industrialization — there is a lot of imagery and emotion tied to coal. And coal is a capital-intensive industry whose economic contribution far exceeds direct jobs. But more fundamentally, coal builds on a pervasive idea that cheap energy fuels economic growth. Now, I disagree with that idea — you need energy, for sure, but there is little evidence it needs to be cheap. Yet you cannot understand the anxiety around curbing coal use without also appreciating the fear that higher energy costs will tank the economy. That’s an argument that needs to be addressed head on.

Second, coal jobs are high-paying jobs. Jobs in coal mining have historically paid ~60% more than the average job in all industries (from 1990 to 2016), although the premium has shrunk in recent years. A lost coal job has a disproportionate impact on household wealth, spending, and taxable revenue. Of course, coal has other costs — to people and the environment. But fewer jobs means fewer resources locally to mitigate some of these side-effects.

Third, no industry has generally replaced coal — coal jobs disappeared but nothing took their place. If you look at the top three counties in terms of coal mining jobs in 1990, they show this exact pattern.

Buchanan, VA had 4,689 coal mining jobs in 1990 — the highest county-level number reported (in some counties, employment numbers are not disclosed if there are only a few companies). By 2016, coal jobs had declined by 80% to 900. What happened to the county? Well, overall employment declined by almost 5,000 — people left the county or the workforce. Nothing came in.

Campbell, WY reported the second highest number in 1990; it saw a jobs boom in the 2000s in both mining and other sectors. But in more recent years, coal and other natural resources have taken a hit: 2,423 jobs lost in 2012–2016. Nothing has replaced them — overall job loss was 2,763 in that period. After mining, nothing.

In Mingo, WV coal jobs were cut in half between 1990 and 2015, 1,313 jobs lost (by 2016, the sector had shrunk to the point of non-disclosure). In the county as a whole, job loses were 4,469 — once again, no sector picked up the slack. Civilian labor force participation was just 44% in 2011–2015 versus 63% in the United States. Around 3 in 10 people (29%) live in poverty — versus 13.5% in the United States as a whole.

There are so many more stories like that.

My point here is not to defend the president. Coal jobs are not coming back. The pundits are right to call bullshit — although they often overstate the facts.

There is another story here — people displaced and communities abandoned. Coal leaving and nothing coming in. Lost hope. A cautionary tale for a society that will be further upended by technology. Yes, call bullshit — but what’s the plan to help the ex coal miner?

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