Growth in the oil and gas industry has sent personal incomes skyrocketing in states that sit above large shale formations, even as Americans in general are seeing less growth in their take-home pay.
Average personal income growth in the United States fell to 2.6 percent in 2013 from 4.2 percent the year before, according to data released on Tuesday by the Commerce Department.
North Dakota saw the nation’s fastest growing income last year, at 7.6 percent, due to growth in the oil and gas industry. The state sits above the large Bakken shale formation.
"Mining (including oil and gas extraction) was one of the major contributors to earnings growth in North Dakota, Oklahoma, and Texas in 2013," the Commerce Department noted.
"Earnings growth rates in these three states have outpaced the national average not only in 2013, but in each of the four years since the recession," it said.
Personal income in West Virginia, which is heavily reliant on the struggling coal industry, grew by only 1.5 percent last year, the least of any state.
Critics of the Obama administration have blamed economic woes in the state on punitive carbon regulations that they say will put many of the state’s coalmines and power plants out of business.
Commerce attributed the trend to "declines in ten industries, including mining, durable goods manufacturing, and construction."