Retraining isn’t as effective as one might hope. For one, it is cheaper to retrain large number of people in a handful of fields than a handful of people in a l

Retraining isn’t as effective as one might hope. For one, it is cheaper to retrain large number of people in a handful of fields than a handful of people in a large number of fields. So you get an oversupply of, say, HVAC installers. Second, many of these miners (and factory workers) live in company towns. Once the company leaves the town slowly dies due to economic suffocation. The stores, plumbers, schools, doctors, etc that used to sell services to the miners now have fewer customers because people slowly move out and the ones that stay have less money because the mining jobs are gone. It would be better to bulldoze the towns and relocate everyone to places that aren’t dying but, unsurprisingly, people don’t like that. There are hundreds of small towns like this across America that have been hoping for a new company to come and save them for decades. When a new company comes along they want to pay low wages and no taxes, and desperate local politicians acquiesce.