I have some friends who are in the system to study this very thing....
Here are some things I take out of what we talk about..
Yup..Higher wages..Good..to those in the system...bad for those not.
First..this means you have to cut ties and travel/move... think of what has to be done for that... if you have kids and wife and home.
Next... Where these high paying positions are...the cost of living is either high when you get there or will be as it sets in.
So this goes across the board and like a shiney dime, everyone is dazzeled but...it is just a dime.
$50k here is a good income but... in New York, Honolulu, LA, and many large cities in the mid west.... peanuts. To maintain the standard of living that a lot have here in Western PA ( meaning the Vision of Middle Class may require $100k/year in many places.
My son wanted to get into the FBI about 20 years ago. He had the education and job skills for Law Enforcement. I told him that he will end up at Quantico for his training and most likely be seeing a first assignment in the Washington DC area. If so.. he will have to think hard. Wife onboard.. he would have started at aroung $14K which is not a livable wage in DC area. So I saw my wife and I housing the Daughter In Law with him buddying up with other new agents just to be close to work. Car/Insurance/parking is a major factor.
Plus..if the area was to become a boom area..impact on the local population can be negative too. All this Shale oil business has incurred unthought of problems in many areas it is in. It causes the COL to skyrocket.. rent, house prices, new car and used car prices, even food and clothing. And to add to this... it is not a PERMANENT thing. After the infrastructurs are in place..all of the people will not be needed in the area to maintain/build. So now the home prices will drop like they did as we went into 2008.
Given that, in many cases you have FORCED out the VERY PEOPLE who helped to build and maintain that Community before this came in. I can see even more Blight. Some call it Progress but I see it as another knife in middle class life and those who worked hard to have what they have...usually the elder population. It reminds me of Natives taking their Elder out into the woods or on and Ice Flow to die.
We need to be putting more thought into our decisions IMHO. Make sure you have a good strong foundation before building a huge house on top of it.
I am not saying that making good money is bad, I am , however saying you have to watch who's backs you are standing on to get there... they could be members of your own family... IE.. your Elder members as well as some of your younger who are dealing with some nasty life decisions... IE Pregnant Daughter with a toddler and a low life who won't pay his share..Parents who lost their retirement in this fiasco.. etc. It isn't the Ecological destruction alone in some...it is the Societal implications as well.
In some towns who have the Shale Boom, many things happen, not just the money... Crime, as well as Law Enforcement calls to incidents.. reminding you of the Wild West Boom Towns and remember..a lot of these incomers are not from these towns... many from Texas, Montana and even Alaska...not one tie here but work.
Silicon Valley is almost a memory, Even all the little machine shops in Meadville... LOL And take a look at the town of Pithole PA near Titusville, not to mention the gray hulks of leftover mills in Western PA. 20 years can make or break.
Even the Get rich schemes have holes
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The precious metal is very attractive in an unstable economic environment, but anyone with access to the Internet can find out about the boom-and-bust cycle of gold. The boom is what all the people on "cash for gold" commercials want you to hear. True, gold has never gone to zero -- but gold did drop 65% in just two years in the mid-1980s." Ok..off my soapbox for a while... point is... think it through...
the good news would be that skill shortages usually mean higher wages
