[LargeWu]

Indeed. Don't be fooled by North Dakota as the top GDP per capita state in the US. There are a relatively small number of landowners in the western half of the state making crazy passive income from oil rights their great-grandfathers lucked into when they immigrated a hundred years ago. The state is very working-class. It maybe doesn't have the same amount of abject poverty that you see in other places, but people here work hard for a living.

Also, the numbers in the article are from 2014 when the oil boom was in still full swing. That's what provided a lot of the highest paying jobs in the state. Drilling levels today are less than 10% of what they were at the peak, and consequently many of those jobs have gone with it.