North Dakota is bucking the downsizing trend by overflowing with jobs — many of them in the oil industry — the New York Times reports. Problem is, the state doesn’t have adequate housing to keep up with would-be carpetbaggers.

The Times sent a reporter to Williston to take the lay of the no-vacancy land:

The same forces that have resulted in more homelessness elsewhere — unemployment, foreclosure, economic misery — have pushed laid off workers from California, Florida, Minnesota, Michigan and Wyoming to abundant jobs here, especially in the booming oil fields.

But in this city rising from the long empty stretches of North Dakota, hundreds are sleeping in their cars or living in motel rooms, pup tents and tiny campers meant for weekend getaways in warmer climes. They are staying on cots in offices and in sleeping bags in the concrete basements of people they barely know.

The majority of Big Sky country job seekers must not have seen There Will be Blood.

A State With Plenty of Jobs but Few Places to Live [New York Times]

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