North Dakota

By James MacPherson BISMARCK, N.D. -- Home improvement retailer Menard Inc. says that it will hire workers from its home base in Wisconsin and fly them to North Dakota to staff a store in Minot, which is near the state's booming oil patch, a region that has more jobs than takers. The company said in a ...

With job creation continuing at a snail's pace, some job seekers are finding that it pays to go where the jobs are. But just as some states were hit harder during the recession than others, the opposite is true in the current rate of economic recovery and job creation. Or to put it another way, some states are ...

Working in coal mines can bring to mind dirty and dangerous labor. But for more than century, it often was lucrative. Joe Caudill, who worked as a roof-bolter in an underground coal mine in Knott County in eastern Kentucky, brought home $105,000 last year, after factoring in overtime pay. But Caudill and ...

It's a chilling statistic; the national poverty level is primed to reach its highest rate since 1965. The situation was so dire back then that President Lyndon Johnson felt moved to launch the War on Poverty. But its advances are at risk of falling by the wayside as the national poverty rate is expected climb ...

If California is the Golden State, and Florida is the Sunshine State then North Dakota might as well be the Employment State. Though its formal nickname is the Peace Garden State, North Dakota currently has the lowest unemployment rate in the U.S. at 3.5 percent. That's 5.6 points lower than the national ...

By JAMES MacPHERSON BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) -- An explosion at a newly drilled oil well in western North Dakota killed two workers and severely injured two others, officials said. The fatal fire was one of two oil field-related blazes reported in the Williston area Wednesday. The other was much smaller and no ...

Energy-producing states have experienced unemployment levels well below those of other states in recent years, thanks in part to a boom in energy exploration that's been driven by high oil prices. It's perhaps little surprise then that states that significantly contribute to the nation's production of oil, ...

By CHRISTOPHER S. RUGABER WASHINGTON (AP) -- Unemployment rates rose in July in more than half the states for the second straight month, evidence that job growth remains weak nationwide. The Labor Department said Friday that unemployment increased in 28 states, fell in nine and remained unchanged in 13. ...