A View of the Bay and Half the Pay

"A view of the Bay and half the pay".   That's one I first heard describing wages in the Traverse City, Michigan area.  It works for the Upper Peninsula, too.  It even fits well for the Keweenaw Peninsula, given its location with Keweenaw Bay on the east side.

Yes, it can be hard to make a living in the Upper Peninsula.  Jobs can be hard to find, especially lately.  Often, they don't pay as much as the same jobs downstate.  Partly because the economy might not support the same wages.  Partly, I believe, some employers seem to believe that just living in the U.P. is part of your compensation package.

And, in a way, it is.  To borrow from the old fishing saying, a bad day at work in the U.P. beats the best day at work anywhere else.  It's just plain better to work in the Yoop.  Many jobs are related to the great natural resources - tourism, logging, mining, etc.  Even jobs in K-12 and higher education have some sort of connection to the outdoors.  Even if you have a hard day at work in a cubicle, in the U.P. you can get in your vehicle after work and be out in the wilderness in minutes.

Workers in Upper Michigan do have to contend with the factor of distance from "the rest of the world".  It is a eleven hour drive from the western tip of the U.P. to Detroit if you drive through Michigan.  The closest "big city" to the western Yoop is Green Bay, Wisconsin.  Shipping of goods is challenge.  Networking with colleagues "down below" is more of a challenge.  Air travel is a true odyssey, starting out at small regional airports using feeder airline flights.  Often there are only a few flights in or out of your local airport.  If you even have a local airport with airline service.  If you do, you often only have one airline to choose from.

The curse of distance can also be a blessing for employers and employees alike.  We Yoopers can have one word response when people say: "Oh, you are so far away from everything".  We say "Exactly".  There is a majority of people in the U.P. who *want* to be far away from "everything".  You can have Detroit.  You can have New York City or L.A.  You can even have Saginaw, Grand Rapids, etc.  Too big for us.  Too many people, too much traffic, too much of just about everything.

Yoopers know how to work and have fun in the middle of nowhere.  Hunting, fishing, hiking, camping, skiing, snowmobiling, snowshoeing, climbing, four wheeling, mountain biking, kayaking, mineral collecting - the list goes on and on.  And some of us even get to do one or more of those things for a living.  Sweet.

True we may not make as much money as a Wall Street banker.  We may not have chic places to eat and party after work.  We may even have to work more than one job to make ends meet.  However, like I said, you can have those other things.  We do just fine up here in the Yoop.