Donald Trump and Coal Mining Jobs: How Far Back Does He Want to Take West Virginia?

That's what readers of a NYT article on support for Trump in West Virginia must be wondering. The piece told readers that Trump was promising to bring back the coal mining jobs to the state. While West Virgina used to have many more jobs in coal mining, that was decades ago.

 

Employment in coal mining had fallen from a peak of more than 130,000 in 1940 to just over 21,000 in 2000, roughly its current level. Employment did rise somewhat in the last decade, reaching 35,700 in December of...