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who told him he was crazy to go now call, looking for jobs.
• He's building a downtown office and condo and already has started a construction company.
• Along with financial security, Manjack says he has "the feeling of American pride, that you're doing your part in getting the U.S. off foreign oil. It's exciting to live here."
• "Four years ago, I didn't have any direction," he says. "I didn't know what the economy was going to do. I didn't know what construction was going to do. ... I feel like I found out where I want to be. ... I don't know how I got to North Dakota. But I'm really glad I did."
• ___
• THE FACTORY WORKER
• Jody Baugh escaped the ranks of the unemployed, but nothing about life feels secure.
• Baugh lost his welding job in fall 2008 when his recreational vehicle factory in Wakarusa, Ind., closed, a casualty of the recession. He was unemployed for almost a year before he found work making fiberglass boats, but at a fraction of his former $19.50 hourly salary.
• "I had to take an $11-an-hour job just to feed my family," Baugh says. But that company closed, too, so he bounced from one job to another, forced out by layoffs or businesses shutting their doors. Along the way, he says, he found himself becoming one of the working poor.
• Baugh now makes modular homes in Indiana. He likes his job and company, but he worries about gas prices, health care costs and more generally, the future.
• "I feel like there's no direction," he says. "You don't have the promise of a job the next day. A few years ago, gas was cheap, food was cheaper. I knew I had a job, at least I thought I had a job. I had a safety net. Now I have no savings. You don't know what's going to happen next week."
• The recession's impact leaves him pining for the past.
• "I would love to go back to before everything happened," he says. "Things were much easier. You felt like you had a future. Now you don't know if you're going to have one. I'm going to be 47 next month and I don't know if I can ever retire. It's really scary. Time catches up with you and you really don't know what to do."
• Baugh feels he's gone backward. "When I was 19, I used to bring home $320 a week," he says. "Now I'm 46 and I bring home $390 to $420. Where's the progress?"
• The financial strain, Baugh says, also took a personal toll, contributing to his divorce from his wife of 21 years; he says their joint annual income plummeted from

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