Downtown Midland, Texas.
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57
Kevin D. Williamson 
New figures from the Bureau of Labor Statisticsconfirm what everybody already knows: If you’re looking for a job in Cleveland, Ohio, your best bet is a one-way ticket to Midland, Texas.
Midland is not the most scenic spot in the United States. (Its sister city, Odessa, was described as “the worst town in the world” in Larry McMurtry’sTexasville.) Imagine one square mile of downtown Atlanta plopped into the middle of a largely featureless savannah and you’ll have the idea. But the average rent on an apartment there is nearly twice what it is in nearby cities of comparable size, and rents are up more than 20 percent year over year — if you are lucky enough to get an apartment. Official unemployment is about 3 percent; real unemployment is effectively zero. The reason for that is a booming energy industry. But it’s a different kind of boom: Whereas previous Texas oil-and-gas booms have been driven largely by prices, this boom is under way when oil prices are high but not dramatically so, and natural-gas prices are on the low side (last year, they were at 13-year lows). This isn’t a price bubble, but real production improvements driven by technological advances.
