If President Donald Trump is to be believed, Appalachian states like West Virginia and Kentucky are filled with unemployed coal miners who are oppressed because out-of-touch liberals won't let them do the jobs that geography and God foreordained for them.
It's a popular myth. But is it true?
"Coal mining is playing a smaller role in West Virginia’s economy over the last decade and over the last century," said Ted Boettner, the executive director of the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy, in an email to Salon. "In 2016, the health care sector employed over 99,000 people in West Virginia while coal mining employed just under 12,000. Meanwhile, total wages in the health care sector were $4.7 billion compared to under $1 billion for coal mining."
Boettner added, "However, coal mining jobs pay about $30,000 more per year on average than health care sector jobs and require less formal education. Coal is still the #1 state export for [West Virginia]." Indeed, a survey taken earlier this decade by the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy (which Boettner co-authored with policy analyst Sean O'Leary) found that 74.9 percent of those employed in the mining industry in West Virginia have a high school degree or less, which makes them less economically competitive in industries that tend to pay higher wages. This provides a strong financial appeal for many residents of Appalachia (three of the four states with 60 percent of America's coal miners are in that region — West Virginia, Kentucky and Pennsylvania).
This same point was echoed by William Hal Gorby, a professor of history at West Virginia University. "In characterizing the region as dominated by coal miners, obviously this is not correct," Gorby told Salon. "In 1985, there were 178,300 coal miners nationally according to U.S. Government data. That number had declined to 56,700 in March 2016."
As the Wall Street Journal recently noted, this is part of a larger trend in American energy consumption patterns. While nuclear and coal power are losing their hold in the market, natural gas, wind and solar power continue to expand. This may have a detrimental effect on the comparatively few coal miners who continue to depend on that industry, but there are plenty of new jobs being created in the other sectors — jobs that are being overlooked when coal is depicted by politicians as the primary enterprise of Appalachia.
This is where a creative approach to policymaking could actually yield results. There is already a movement afoot to turn the erstwhile coal region of Appalachia into Silicon Holler, since many of the skill sets possessed by former coal miners can be transferrable to tech jobs. Notably, President Donald Trump doesn't seem open to job retraining or other forms of assistance, considering that his 2018 budget eliminated the Appalachia Regional Commission and the US Economic Development Commission, taking $340 million out of money meant to assist coal workers in eastern Kentucky.
Yet while journalism projects like "100 Days in Appalachia" exist to dispel these and other stereotypes about the region, it can be hard to set the stereotypes aside when you consider how Trump won states like West Virginia, Kentucky, Pennsylvania and Ohio, the last two of which had gone blue for Barack Obama. Indeed, West Virginia even achieved a level of infamy last year when a Democratic state senate candidate was beaten at a campaign event by a man with brass knuckles.
How was Trump able to effectively sweep Appalachian states like West Virginia and Kentucky by promoting outdated stereotypes? Why did these states become Trump Country?
"If Appalachia is Trump Country, then what is the West? What's Wyoming? What's Staten Island? What are the accumulated red states and red corners of blue states?" said public historian Elizabeth Catte in a recent interview. "Calling Appalachia 'Trump Country' exceptionalizes the region, and the election shows us that support for Donald Trump is not at all exceptional. We must all accept this. There are no concise red state/blue state, urban/rural, left/right narratives that explain our current political moment."
Gorby added an intriguing socioeconomic subtext to that sentiment, pointing out that one can empathize with Appalachia's working class without reducing them to stereotypes.
"Many Appalachians work hard, physically demanding jobs. Coal mining is an obvious one, but now there are many more working in the shale oil and gas fields of Northern Appalachia, in logging, and smaller numbers in the chemical and steel industries than previous generations," Gorby told Salon. "There are places that possess more diversified economies, but as noted before this gets lost within the popular mental construct of where Appalachia is in the country."
"It should not be forgotten that there are still a large number of Appalachians who live in non-coal mining areas, work for a hi-tech business in one of the region’s larger cities, wear scrubs and assist those in need in numerous healthcare facilities, and those who still earn their livelihood from farming and raising livestock," Gorby added.
The point here, it must be emphasized, is not that Americans should disregard the economic needs of coal miners. Every American who is willing to work hard should have a right to a decent job (a principle embedded in Franklin Roosevelt's Economic Bill of Rights), and when people are thrown out of work by economic factors beyond their control, it is not only reasonable but just to expect the government to come to their assistance.
The lesson for progressives, then, is this: If pro-working-class policies are going to be effective, they need to be rooted in reality rather than political folklore. The image of the put-upon coal miner may be iconic, but that doesn't make it accurate anymore. To show compassion to the laid off, you need to point them in the direction of where opportunities actually exist in our current economy. Anything else is at best ill-informed and at worst disingenuous.
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