Appalachian Miners Are Learning to Code
- Kentucky hit hard by 75% collapse in price of coal since 2011
- At least 26,000 U.S. coal mining jobs have been lost in slump
Former Coca-Cola bottling plant, which is the new home to BitSource.
Photographer: Sam Owens/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
Jim Ratliff worked for 14 years in the mines of eastern Kentucky, drilling holes and blasting dynamite to expose the coal that has powered Appalachian life for more than a century.
Today, he rolls into an office at 8 a.m., settles into a small metal desk and does something that, until last year, was completely foreign to him: computer coding.