Moving to Economic Opportunity: The Migration Response to the Fracking Boom

Exploiting positive labor market shocks from localized “fracking” booms, I estimate that fracking increased migration to impacted areas, but there is significant heterogeneity across both demographics and regions. Migrants to fracking areas were more likely to be male, unmarried, young, and less educated than movers more generally. These local booms increased in-migration rates to North Dakota fracking counties by nearly twice as much as other fracking areas. Differences across geography in labor market impacts, commuting behavior, initial population characteristics, or nonlinearities only partially explained this gap. There is evidence that heterogeneous information flows might be playing a role.