North Dakota’s Phantom Roughnecks Build Economy, Destroy Roads

North Dakota’s revived oil industry is transforming the landscape, adding $1 billion a year in tax revenue and fueling an employment boom in a state that has at least 14,000 unfilled jobs. The economic surge is a demographic phantom.

U.S. census figures released yesterday exclude thousands of oil-field roughnecks living in “man camps” or motels as temporary residents. The census counted them in their home states, not North Dakota, whose population grew 4.7 percent to 672,591 between 2000 and 2010, about half the national average of 9.7 percent.