In 2011, West Virginia -- the second-largest U.S. coal producer -- accounted for 25 percent of the country's 91,611 coal jobs. By 2012, the number of miners or coal-related workers in West Virginia who applied for unemployment benefits had nearly tripled to almost 6,000.
But not all is lost. Hydraulic fracturing has made tapping into shale gas a viable endeavor, and the losses in coal could be more than made up by the gains in shale. About 3.5 million jobs will be created by 2035 as the United States exploits its shale reserves, a 2012 study by IHS Global Insight estimated