Out here in Western Colorado, the locals tend to have a different measuring stick as the trickle-down economy trickles away.
Comparisons don't get made with the dot-com bust or the Great Depression. Here, people talk about Black Sunday, May 2nd, 1982, when Exxon shut down its Colony Oil Sale project and about 2,000 jobs disappeared in a single day. About 10,000 jobs in all were lost in a three-county region that only had about 110,000 total population, as supporting contractors, residential construction, retail and other businesses that relied on the project also crumpled and real estate values followed.
I was speaking today with an electrician who said their business is slow. Last year, three firms might bid on a project. Last week, on one new job they were among 14 bidders; three came in from Denver to bid. The "winner" will basically buy the job to keep from laying off workers.
He says a lot of his neighbors are working for some of the oil and gas companies in the area. Or were. With prices back down, the rigs that kept Grand Junction's economy booming ahead of the rest of the nation's are being idled. Men who were supervisors went to driving trucks, then the trucks were parked and they're back doing labor. Petroleum engineers making $100,000 last year are making nothing.
Unlike past downturns, there's really no place to go where the job outlook is better.
But he still says things aren't too bad. He lived in nearby Rifle when Exxon pulled out. The bars filled up Monday morning. Suddenly unemployed men drove trucks through fences and tipped over company house trailers. Within a week, 79 kids had left his eight-grade class of about 240.
We needed this correction, he said. He has another job to go to. Like a lot of natives, he's seen worse.
