There's A Direct Relationship Between How Rich You Are, And How Close You Live To One Area Of North Dakota

Some cool charts from Rob Grunewald and Dulguun Batbold at the Minneapolis Fed: they've plotted distance from ground zero of North Dakota's shale oil boom, the Bakken formation, against unemployment and wages (via FTAlphaville).

They show that the further you get, the higher the former, while the latter moves lower.

First, here's the region we're talking about:

The larger the concentric circle you live in, the more likely you are to be unemployed...

And have lower wages:

Here are their comments:

Wage growth in the Bakken began to separate from other counties in 2004 and accelerated after 2005, the start of the oil boom (see Chart 1). But wage growth in counties up to 100 miles away from the Bakken didn’t separate from other non-Bakken counties until 2009.

Unemployment rates across these areas looked quite similar in 2003 and continued lower in a fairly tight band until about 2008. But a notable divergence sprouted in 2009. While rates went up across the board, they rose faster in relation to the distance from the Bakken. Beginning in 2010, unemployment rates started falling, but did so much faster in Bakken counties, and there is now a much wider spread of unemployment rates that adhere very closely to the distance from the Bakken.

And the chart showing the exact correlation, which the researchers say "has been growing strong over time."