A Trip that Changed my Outlook on What I Believe the Economy to Look Like

Searching for job sectors was troublesome as it lead me to information about what different type of jobs are in the United Kingdom and other countries as opposed to the U.S.  In the U.S., sector is a broader term used to classify industries and then industries classify jobs.  Meaning, industries will give me more of a specific breakdown of the types of work being done throughout the U.S.  I found more about job industries of ND on a compilation website of the 2010 US census.  With this research I was able to compare ND and Colorado and find how much of the population was employed in each industry.  I narrowed down the information to find the top dissimilarities and then looked at where ND seemed to have more of a concentration of jobs than Colorado.

Agriculture/forestry/fishing and hunting/mining had 400% more of the working population employed in ND while Education Services/health care/social assistance had 25% more of the workforce than Colorado.  It seems as though Colorado has more of the workforce in information, finance/insurance, real estate/rental leasing, and lastly arts/entertainment/recreation/accommodation/food services.  Which lead me to ask: where are the jobs in the education services and mining services at in ND?  Why isn’t there more growth in other job fields?

I also learned that the unemployment rate represents people who are willing able to work, but cannot find work.  In order for the employment rate to stay the same it has to grow as fast as the labor force.

Jobs grew from 369,000 to 430,000  with an increase of 16.5% over the decade 2000 to 2010 while population growth, during the same time period was 642,200 to 672,591 with an increase of 4.7%.  This means jobs are growing faster than the population, but does this mean there is inflation?  Where is the inflation?  Where is the government spending its money?

After checking out a fun migration map where you can see how many people move to and from any county in the U.S.,  I was able to see there was more movement within the state than people moving out of state.  This really surprised me and made me want to see for myself where the jobs were.

Pickled sausage, pickles, pickled egg.

I went searching for more information from friends and family as I ended up taking an impromptu trip to ND to find real life examples of information.  Although the drive for me was long and boring, I have to say the area has been nothing but life and bustle.  My trip into ND started at Fargo, ND the biggest city in the state with a population of 105,549.  I was surprised to find gas prices and grocery prices not too far off from the city I live in which is Longmont, CO.  (Some food I could not compare, as I had no clue what it was.  See picture above.) Even though gas is different here in the fact that they don’t use ethanol, which usually means a higher price, and it was a holiday, gas was right around Longmont prices.  After polling some friends and family (thank you Mary, Alan, Mom, and all the friendly people around the area that pointed me in the right direction) I was able to find that inflation isn't affecting the entire state.  It seems to be affecting other parts.  Which made me wonder: What cities ARE affected and where are they?