Marathon Pundit: Want a job? Consider coal mining

The coal industry is hiring, as AP reports:

Even as a wave of job cuts afflicts workers nationwide, mine operators in coal country are offering free health insurance, gas money, stock and bonuses to lure enough miners as coal fetches record prices.

Alpha Natural Resources announced Thursday that it would dole out 25 shares of stock to each of its 3,600 employees in hopes that they'll stay put. It will pay bonuses of up to $9,000 to miners who stay three years, and will pay even more to members of highly trained rescue squads.

Massey Energy Co., the nation's No. 4 coal producer, recently offered guaranteed three-year contracts to individual miners.

Those companies, both based in Virginia, are trying to fend off the employee poaching that rippled through the industry during a price spike in 2005 and 2006.