In Appalachia, New Coal Miners Are Scarce

For a teenager like Deyonta Coleman, a miner’s starting salary of $70,000 a year has a lot of appeal. Yet after graduating this spring from high school in Logan, W.Va., Coleman began studying to be an electrician rather than following his stepfather into a job underground. “My mom wouldn’t let me be a coal miner even if I wanted to,” says Coleman. “I guess she doesn’t want that to be the death of me.”

With prices near record levels and coal exports climbing to the highest rate in almost 20 years, mines will need to hire 17,000 workers by 2018, government figures show. But like Coleman, many young people from coal-rich regions view mining as too dangerous. And those who might accept the risk often abuse drugs such as crystal methamphetamine. Finding qualified workers for the mines “is a serious issue,” says William L. Burns, an analyst at investment bank Johnson Rice in New Orleans. “There’s no Starbucks underground.”