Wyoming wins over Michigan job seekers

[Herman Munster]

http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/employment/2006-12-04-wyoming-job-seekers-michigan_x.htm

At times, Kathy Emmons can sound like a tour guide.
Wyoming, says the director of the state's department of workforce services, isn't as cold in the winter as people think. There's very little traffic. Tons of skiing and snowboarding. No state income tax. And the best part: lots of available jobs.

Wyoming, a state with a population of around 500,000, is seeing a boom in the energy, coal mining, high-tech data storage, communications and health care industries. The need for all kinds of workers, especially skilled ones, is so great that the state is actively recruiting from Michigan, were the situation is almost the exact opposite.

For the past two years, as General Motors, then Ford Motor and now Chrysler Group have sounded the siren on their worsening financial situations, workers have lived under the daily stress of knowing their jobs could be eliminated at any moment. More than 70,000 hourly autoworkers have agreed to take buyout packages this year. The impact of those job losses is reverberating throughout Michigan's economy, affecting supplier companies that make everything from steel wheel wells to paper towels used in plant restrooms.

So, Wyoming officials thought, why not bring some of Michigan's displaced workers 1,000 miles west? The recruiting effort was "born out of absolute necessity to bring in people to fill jobs," Emmons says. "With only a half a million people, we just don't have enough people to fill the jobs."