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Easily the State's best employment market, and the Nation's number 2 employment market is in Morgantown. Check the Sunday Dominion Post for 4 pages of want ads with nursing jobs prominently featured. The State's primary healthcare teaching institution is located there with two major hospitals, as well as hospitals in nearby Fairmont and a VA hospital in Clarksburg. The State's doctoral level University is located there and the area shares with the Martinsburg area the distinction of being the State's primary growth areas. Pittsburgh is 1 hour 15 minutes away via expressway and the outdoor venues in the area are outstanding.
You can finding nursing jobs just about anywhere in WV.
Some of the posters on here are exceedingly biased towards Huntington and Morgantown. I lived in Morgantown for 7 years and I've been in Huntington for a few weeks...honestly, I find both towns boring and lifeless. Charleston doesn't have any cheerleaders on here, so what you read about it is close to the truth.
It took about 4 years for me to get tired of Morgantown. It took about 2 weeks for me to get tired of Huntington. And that's only because I can get Tudor's Biscuit World every morning. Not even a Rocket Biscuit every morning makes me want to live here. I'm counting down the days until my temp work is done. At least in Morgantown I could drive up to Pittsburgh on the weekends to find something to do. Huntington is just isolated. As is Charleston. And on their own laurels I can't really see myself living in either long term. But that's just my opinion. If you are looking for a slower, less hectic life, Huntington would be nice. There isn't even any traffic anywhere in this town to bog your life down. I can drive from the burbs in Barboursville to downtown in like 15 minutes at 8:30AM. Try that in Morgantown and you'll be 45 minutes late. Of course, driving from Lower Bucks County to center city is a 1.5 hour voyage in Philly rush hour, so I suppose that's no thing to y'all. Charleston is probably a decent bet as its very similar to Huntington. "Happening" in West Virginia terms..."slower" in city folk terms.
Parkersburg is unbelievably isolated, slow, and pleasant. Leave it To Beaver land. I was bored out of my mind as a teenager, but if you want calm and quiet, I'd look there. Martinsburg is close to DC...expanding rapidly...that might be an idea, too.
Pharm have you considered 'out of country for a work sabatical...Sydney/Perth or Wellington/Christchurch.
While New Zealand is boring in the 'proper British sense...Sydney and Perth are far from that..
India is on my own short list...Modular housing is the solution to all single family dwellings in that country and the international ideas eventually come here to be re-invented.
CT mentioned the Help Wanted Ads in the Dominion Post...2 years ago they were running 180/200 job calls per Sunday issue...Now it's 1/2 that volume...but still remarkable, when you consider the countries plight.
See a shortage in LPN's as the wage rate is in the $12 per range with bonus to hire.
In terms of the film industry, things do get filmed here from time to time with the biggest of these being We are Marshall, which was filmed here in Huntington. New tax incentives were passed to try to bring more filming to the state but most of the productions are on a smaller level.
Correct me if I am wrong but to get those incentives I had always been told that only applies to certain films if they want to get such things in West Virginia. In other words family flicks like "We Are Marshall" and "Sweet Dreams" are OK but hard stuff such as films that are rated "R", full of four letter words and nudity..not OK. Of course West Virginia can't really totally prevent such movies from being filmed there but to get those incentives....
Virginia is kinda like that, the movie "Evan Almighty" and I believe even "Dirty Dancing" got quite a bit of those state incentives....but it didn't work for John Waters. At first plans were to shoot at least part of his movie "A Dirty Shame" in Northern Virginia but Virginia said NO ( I would imagine the content of that movie was the reason ) so as a result Waters more/less did the filming in his homebase of Baltimore. I actually had a few friends who were in "A Dirty Shame" and when they told me this, I was hardly surprised.
To tell you the truth, I could never understand the interest
in trying to get films made in West Virginia. Such activities
are sporadic at best, and to maintain an office to promote
it would not seem cost effective to me. Maybe I'm wrong,
but how could having a bunch of actors hang around for
a few months be worth all of that?
Did they really drop that much money in Huntington when
they made the film there?
Movies are big money. Due to there being no tax incentives in place at the time, part of the filming for "We are Marshall" was moved to Atlanta. I couldn't find the article but it seemed like WV lost over $1million in taxes because of this, which is why they rushed to get incentives passed afterward. Here's an article about how much can be made off of taxes for filming.
"Even though the new incentives didn’t pass until mid-year 2008, the office said it helped boost the economic impact of the movie and TV industry in Georgia over the previous year from $413 million to an estimated $524 million."
This place amazes me each time I go there. It's less than 30 mins from the Martinsburg, WV area.
Other useful links:
Shopping/housing - behind and around the 'Centre of Hagerstown' Garland Groh is a subdivision. You can walk to the Border's, IHOP, Home Depot, Walmart. Further down the road is Starbuck's, Best Buy and more houses.
The location map page within the link listed below, re westfield's, is helpful. Location
We do like the Martinsburg, WV area as it's about 30 mins from Frederick and the Hagerstown/Huyett (MD) area and 30 mins in opposite direction from Winchester and Leesburg (VA) area.
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