Come Home North Dakota

While the national unemployment rate is 8.3 percent, in North Dakota it is 3.2 percent — and it is 1 percent in Williams County, where Williston has grown from a population of 12,500 before the boom began in 2008 to an estimated 20,000 now.

One of the largest oilfield services companies, Weatherford operates in more than 100 countries and employs more than 50,000 people worldwide.

I smell opportunity, don’t you?

When ever I would say I’m from North Dakota I’d get these blank stares and everyone pictures the movie Fargo or thinks we all live on a farm so I wanted to do a documentary that represents present day North Dakota."

In North Dakota, unemployment is 3.2 percent. In Tioga, it’s less than 2 percent. Workers in the oil fields make about $100,000 a year, and people come from all over for jobs. "But we’ve got a problem with sleeping arrangements," Grubb said. "They either stay in their campers or in the man camp."

"The man camp?" I asked.

The state’s unemployment rate hovers around 3 percent, and "Help Wanted" signs litter the landscape of cities such as Williston in the same way "For Sale" signs populate the streets of Las Vegas.

"The minute I stepped onto campus, I knew that North Dakota State was for me."

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Nowhere is this potential clearer than in Fargo, which is emerging as a high-tech hub. Doug Burgum, from nearby Arthur, N.D., founded Great Plains Software in the mid-1980s. Burgum says he saw potential in the engineering grads pumped out by North Dakota State University, many of whom worked in Fargo’s large and expanding specialty-farm-equipment industry. “My business strategy is to be close to the source of supply,” says Burgum. “North Dakota gave us access to the raw material of college students.”

A tiny North Dakota town’s promise of cash and free land lured only one family from out of state. Now, Michael and Jeanette Tristani and their 12-year-old twins are trying to move from the town without a traffic light back to Miami.