Entry-Level Jobs Pay Six Figures in This Gritty Part of America

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Theyโ€™re independents, innovators, young, and heeding an entrepreneurial urge: โ€˜If you have any ambition at all, move to North Dakota … the skyโ€™s the limit.โ€™

WILLISTON, N.D.โ€”Josef McConnell, a tennis coach from Southern California, had been unemployed for a year after the government response to the pandemic destroyed his business. Then, in 2021, a friend told him that there were good-paying jobs to be had in North Dakotaโ€™s Bakken oilfield.

He knew nothing of oilfields, never heard of the Bakken Basin, nor, for that matter, could he say much about North Dakota other than he believed the state to be a cold, flat flyover tundra with corn and cows somewhere near Canada that had previously been โ€œ100 percent not on my mind.โ€

Nevertheless, Mr. McConnell said, โ€œI picked up everything and left. It was do-or-die.โ€

He quickly secured a job laboring at SandPro, a sand, wellhead, and automation management start-up in Berthold, west of Minot. As promised, good-paying jobs were available. As promised, they were muscle jobs, dirty jobs, and long-shift jobs.

He was โ€œcleaning iron, tearing things apart,โ€ disassembling and rebuilding โ€œfrack treesโ€™ that cap frackedโ€”hydraulically fracturedโ€”oil wells. It was hard, gritty work, 12 hours a day, for weeks at a time in an industrial beehive down the road and across the highway from downtown Berthold, a towering grain elevator looming as its landmark above bald grassy ridges and cottonwood-framed creek beds.

But the money was fantastic and, it dawned on him that โ€œthis could be a career, not just a job,โ€ Mr. McConnell said.

โ€œI told myself that if I couldnโ€™t make it through the first winter, this is not for me. I survived. It sucked, but I survived,โ€ he said. โ€œFrom there on, I tried to learn everything I could. I wanted to know how it worked, what it did. I cross-trained into all the aspects of the business.โ€

As SandPro grew, Mr. McConnell, 33, was appointed night-shift supervisor. Last December, he ascended to shop manager. In August, he became a homeowner. โ€œIโ€™d never be able to do that in California,โ€ he said.

Byย John Haughey

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