Krugman Compares Pennsylvania's Shale Boom To North Dakota's
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Scott Detrow
Every liberal’s favorite economist, Paul Krugman, has put together an interesting blog post comparing Pennsylvania’s energy economy to North Dakota’s.
Both states have seen a major uptick in oil and gas drilling jobs, due to advances in hydraulic fracturing technology. But while North Dakota’s shale oil boom has kept unemployment there below 4 percent, Pennsylvania’s is only slightly below the national average, at 7.7 percent.
“The reason, of course,” he writes, “is that Pennsylvania has around 20 times as many people as North Dakota.”

Pennsylvania's unemployment rate, compared to North Dakota's