September 11, 2016
A recurring theme of much of the coverage of support for Donald Trump in Appalachian states is that President Obama’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and thereby reduce the use of coal, have led to a large loss of coal mining jobs. This loss of jobs supposedly devastated the economy of the region. Voters hope that Trump will bring back the mining jobs and thereby restore the economy of the region. A New York Times article on support for Trump in Eastern Kentucky repeats this theme.
The problem with the story is that most of the mining jobs in Kentucky were lost long ago. Even when President Obama took office it was a relatively minor source of employment in the state. The figure below shows coal mining jobs in Kentucky. The number had fallen from close to 30,000 at the start of the 1990s to less than 15,000 by the end of the decade. (It had been close to 50,000 in 1980.)
There was somewhat of an uptick as President Obama came into office due to the surge in world oil prices, but this lasted for less than two years. The current employment level of 6,900 is down about 8,500 from the 2007 levels. By comparison, total employment in Kentucky is over 1,900,000. This means the jobs lost in the mining industry over the last decade are a bit less than 0.5 percent of total employment in the state.
The loss of these jobs has undoubtedly been a huge tragedy for the people directly affected and for the communities in which these jobs are located. However, it does not seem plausible that the actual job loss can explain much about political attitudes across the state.
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