Already this year, Colorado’s oilfields have been forced to lay off at least 280 workers. Now, Weld County is bracing for more job loss after the region’s second-largest energy producer announced an upcoming third round of layoffs, the Greeley Tribune reports.
Low energy prices are already taking a toll on energy companies—so the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan, which penalizes traditional energy sources, has proven especially destructive.
For years, the energy sector provided high-paid jobs for workers that required little more than a high school degree.
Now that those opportunities are slipping away, families are hurting, a look at the neighboring state of Wyoming shows.
Inside Energy, a reporting team based in Colorado, Wyoming and North Dakota and funded by a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, recently reported on how one laid-off coal worker was faring:
Gail Japp’s bright blue eyes are the kind you keep on noticing. I met the 64 year old at her home outside of Gillette, Wyo on a gray, windy, day in April. She had just finishing filling out unemployment paperwork.
Japp is one of the 235 coal miners who were laid off by Peabody Energy in March. Arch Coal cut around 230 positions that same week.
I asked her how she felt that day. Her reply: “Devastated, scared. What in the world am I gonna do? I’m single. I’m 64. I have a mortgage. Am I gonna lose my house?”
Meanwhile, in Williston, North Dakota, the population has shrunk by at least 16 percent in a single year as the energy industry contracts. Reuters wrote this spring about the impact on one part of local economy:
"No one has any money to spend here anymore," said an exotic dancer at Williston's Heartbreakers strip club. She estimated that tips had gone down more than 60 percent since last fall. … One recent [spring] evening, Heartbreakers attracted only three customers.
That grim harbinger is brought to you courtesy of overregulation.