Flint, Mich. – With the lure of 6,000 jobs that pay as high as $28 an hour plus benefits, the state of Wyoming returned to Michigan on Thursday to woo frustrated workers.
Like all job fairs held in Michigan these days, turnout was strong – the event sponsored by the Cowboy State in Flint drew about 1,500 people. Another Wyoming job fair is scheduled for Saturday in Grand Rapids.
“All I know about Wyoming is it’s cold and gray. But it’s got jobs. That’s what makes it better than here,” said Scott Parkinson, 36, as he waited in line with his mother, Carole Isom, under a banner declaring: “Like Wyoming, you’re wide open for opportunities.” It included a picture of an old wagon wheel.
The Parkinson family, like many others, came to Michigan years ago to work in the auto industry, which for decades provided blue-collar workers with the highest standard of living in America.
Today, Michigan has the highest unemployment rate in the nation, 7.1 percent, and factory jobs continue to evaporate. In the Flint area, in many ways the poster child of Michigan’s industrial decline, the jobless rate is 8.3 percent.
“This is a dead state. It’s time to go,” Parkinson said.
Wyoming, in contrast, has more jobs than workers in its booming coal, oil and natural- gas industries, and boasts one of the lowest jobless rates in the nation at 3.3 percent.
This is Wyoming’s third recruiting trip to the Great Lakes State in the past year to fill mining-related jobs and other positions.
“We keep coming back because we’ve had much success here,” said Ruth Benson, director of the Campbell County (Wyo.) Economic Development Corp. “There’s plenty of skilled workers here who understand a good work ethic and winter weather. And we need workers.”
The efforts by Wyoming to lure Michigan workers out West has received national attention, thanks to a front-page story last month in The New York Times that was picked up by national wire services. The fascination partly stems from the contrast between Flint’s industry-scarred urban landscape and the wide-open spaces of Wyoming.
Despite the geographic and cultural chasm between Flint and Wyoming, at least 200 Michigan residents, many with their families, already have moved to Wyoming, Benson said. They have included tool-and-die makers, teachers, former cops and former autoworkers.
Of two dozen people interviewed by The Detroit News at the job fair, all but three had jobs, but most said Michigan’s future seems too bleak to stay.
“All I know is I need to make a better living” said Jason Hall, 36, a service manager at a propane company.
“Either I leave now with my family or I watch my kids leave,” said Hall.
