In contrast to most economic news, the oil industry is booming in North Dakota.  In the New York Times article “A Great Divide Over Oil Riches,” A. G. Sulzberger reports on mineral rights in Mountrail County and the revenue’s impact on landowners, speculators and the area.  He cites analysis from Social Explorer’s Andrew Beveridge, and features a map and chart based on Beveridge’s and the Census Bureau’s numbers.

Sure enough, money is flowing by the barrelful into Mountrail County, transforming a tiny community once proudly situated in the middle of nowhere into an unexpected oasis of prosperity at the heart of the nation’s biggest oil play.

No other county in the state has had a bigger jump in the number of households earning more than $100,000, which spiked to 21 percent from 6 percent during the last decade, according to an analysis of census data. But much like the crude below, the benefits have spread unevenly, often as a result of decisions made long ago.

…With the unemployment rate at only 1.3 percent, local sons and daughters are no longer leaving to find work.

And as the rest of the nation watched incomes drop or stagnate, in Mountrail County median income rose more than 50 percent in the last decade, the fifth-highest gain in the nation. Residents earned on average an additional $20,000, adjusted for inflation, according to an analysis of census data by Andrew A. Beveridge, a demographer at Queens College in New York.

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