A family at a campground in Williston, N.D., where oil boom workers had to find alternatives to more traditional housing options, March 31, 2010.
“That sounds a lot like the stories you’ve been hearing at the national level for the past couple years,” he added. The underlying causes are different, of course. Williston was hit by a surge in demand as companies and workers flooded into what had been a small city in the Northern Plains. The United States was hit by a pandemic, which caused a shift in demand and disrupted supply chains around the world. And the comparison goes only so far: Williston’s population roughly doubled from 2010 to 2020. No one expects that to happen to the country as a whole.
“That was always going to cause its own problems on prices and shortages,” said Adam Ozimek, chief economist for the Economic Innovation Group, a Washington research organization. “Businesses were never going to be like, ‘I’m going to build 10 new bicycle factories right now because we’re in a long-term bicycling boom.’”
“I know people will hear today’s extraordinary jobs report and say they don’t see it, they don’t feel it in their own lives,” President Joe Biden said Friday. “I know how hard it is. I know it’s hard to feel good about job creation when you already have a job and you’re dealing with rising prices — food and gas and so much more. I get it.”