CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Kanawha County Commission President Kent Carper said the population decrease in Kanawha County can be attributed to decline in the coal industry.
According to estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau, West Virginia’s population declined in 2016, marking the fourth straight year of the trend. The population of Kanawha County dropped 1,966 residents, the most among any county in the state.
In all, 47 out of 55 counties in the Mountain State saw numbers fall.
Carper said on Friday’s “580 Live” people move to where there are available jobs.
“A lot of it was natural gas,” he said. “Natural gas simply is not labor intensive, and when you shut down the coal mines, you lose a lot of jobs.”
According to Carper, there was at least 15,000 more miners in Kanawha County just in the 1980s.
“A lot of chemical jobs have been globalized just because they’ve got cheaper labor,” he said.
The commission president said while he is not a fan of President Donald Trump, he is correct when it comes to job operations being moved overseas.
“We’ve been played like suckers,” Carper said. “We let our jobs go there, and we buy the stuff back.”