Instead of traveling to boost their total compensation at higher-paying projects, craftworkers were journeying greater distances just to find work.

Korman interviewed a human resources director for a nonunion electrical contractor who described workers so desperate they would show up unannounced, with their life possessions in their car, and force an interview by sitting in his firm’s lobby for hours.

Although solid statistics on the workers were not available, Korman was told that the number was likely about 100,000, among them millwrights, electricians, welders and pipefitters needed to complete paper mills, powerplants and oil refineries.

A sidebar article profiled 40-year-old millwright Cliff Billings, who relocated his family half a dozen times across the South before finally taking an assignment on Johnston Island in the Pacific Ocean for a chemical weapons cleanup project.

Some of the workers Korman interviewed attributed their divorces to long separations stemming from their far-flung assignments, which sometimes involved six and seven day work weeks with mandatory overtime.