[Coach_Owens87]

Coach you've had some dandy posts in the past, but this one takes the cake . I haven't laughed this much in a long time, the only way I could ever believe that a MTR job only employed 20 is if they only ran one shift per day and it's hard for me to believe that a company would spend 20 to 25 million dollars on a mining operation and only operate it 1 shift per day. You keep insisting that MTR is a cheaper way to produce coal but if you only operated 1 shift per day the cost per ton would be quadrupled that of underground mines. Then you try to tell me that 45% of the mines only employee 3 this is great stuff, lol you have to tell me where you found this info. Do you really think that 3 employees can take a mountain down (as anti-mining groups want everyone to believe) 800 ft. to 1000 ft. The average size MTR job will have at least 20 pieces of equipment if not a lot more and operates 2 shifts per day and usually 6 days a week.

You continue to say that MTR jobs have fewer workers than underground mines, I know you won't believe me but it's really closer to 50-50, our surface mines employee 47, while our deepmines employee 51 and 45 both surface and underground mines vary depending on which method they use.

Now if you still believe that MTR is to blame for the decreased number of miners then maybe you could explain the drop from 704,000 in 1923 to 141,000 in 1963 which was well before MTR method.

Coal companies have been begging for people for the last 5 years and the 15% increase of mining jobs could be 25% if more people could pass a drug test which is another thread by itself.

Again thanks for your last post I needed a good laugh.

I told you where I found this info, the department of labor. All the info I posted came from that site.

here is the link I forgot to post.

http://www.bls.gov/oco/cg/cgs004.htm

I would take statistics from the department of labor before I would the "Western economic analysis center".

The only laugh here is your question, why did jobs drop from 1923 to 1963. Well in case you didn't know, there was a small thing that happened called the depression that started in the 20's. Everyone lost jobs, and the oil, gas, and coal industry took humongous blows. When world war 2 rolled around, we needed to really boost our production in the US, so coal mining jobs started to pick up again. The coal industry is a boom and bust industry also, so it's always rising and falling. I really don't feel like giving a history lesson, but if you need one just send me a PM.

I like you try to make it seem that I blame all the job losses on MTR, and I dont, I just think that MTR has a lot to do with the current decrease in jobs, and I provided stats to prove that. Now that our economy is really slipping, I'm sure more miners will lose jobs, and thats a shame. I feel dumber when I debate with you sometimes, you really have a very one track mind.