West Virginia is Trading Trump for Tech Workers

MORGANTOWN, W.Va.—In a hotel just off of West Virginia University’s campus in early June, drowsy night shift workers from the local pharmaceutical plant filed through a poorly lit suite, filling out unemployment paperwork, applying for supplemental health insurance and cracking jokes about the breathtaking advertisements for a new state program that will pay you to move to a place many of them are considering leaving. Six months before, officials at Viatris announced that the plant, which has been a fixture in Morgantown since 1965, would close at the end of July, shipping more than 1,500 jobs overseas. In a state already suffering from the freefall of its signature coal mining industry, the loss of jobs that paid as much as $80,000 sent alarms through the capital.-- More...