Biggest private coal company could cut up to 4,400 jobs

Abandoned coal structures in Kentucky
(Image credit: Mario Tama/Getty Images)

The largest private coal mining corporation in America, Murray Energy, has warned it may have to lay off as many as 4,400 employees — some 80 percent of the company's workforce — thanks to a long-term slump in the coal markets.

The Central Appalachian coal price benchmark has sunk to just $40 a ton, about half of its price in 2011, and many major coal producers are declaring bankruptcy. Murray Energy has already laid off about 3,000 workers in the past year, mostly in West Virginia, Illinois, and Ohio.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.