With all due respect, I covered the jobs issue in the last part of my post "The Argument for Wyoming." Here it is:
The population and political demographic arguments clearly favor Wyoming. But then the Wyoming detractors raise the issue of jobs. I used to think that was a deal-breaker, but not anymore. This leads us to Cheyenne.
Although Wyoming itself would not be able to employ thousands of Porcupines, there are several locations in other states right outside of Wyoming that could pick up the slack. I have no data to back this up, but I’ve read a few times that many Porcupines are young (in their twenties and thirties) and high tech. So, finding jobs for these types of people is going to be very important.
Cheyenne seems to be a really good place for these types of Porcupines to settle. It is only 46 miles from Fort Collins, Colorado which has a population of 260,000+, one of the ten fastest growing MSAs (metropolitan statistical area) in the country (the Ft. Collins MSA expects 215,000 new jobs between 1997 and 2010), employers such as Colorado State University, ConAgra Beef, Hewlett-Packard, Agilent Technologies, Poudre Valley Health Systems, Eastman Kodak, Wal-Mart, State Farm Insurance, StarTek, Inc., Woodward, Advanced Energy, Teledyne WaterPik, McKee Medical Center, Anheuser-Busch, and Celestica), and a median income of $58,200.
Cheyenne is also just 63 miles away from Greeley, Colorado which has 200,000+ people, 71 miles away from the Longmont/Boulder area which has 300,000+ people, and 94 miles from the Denver area which has 2,200,000+ people.
A daily commute from Cheyenne to Fort Collins is definitely possible. And maybe a commute to Greeley can be done, too. After all, many big city commuters spend up to an hour or even an hour and a half in travel time from door to door.
It’s also possible that we could get some companies in Denver to hire Porcupines to telecommute, say, four days a week, and travel to the office one day a week. They would benefit because they could pay a lot less money due to the cost of living difference. And once enough skilled workers are in Cheyenne, some companies would certainly open an office there since Wyoming is very pro-business and the real estate leasing costs would be much cheaper.