The more things change, the more they stay the same. Even in the midst of an oil boom that has seismically changed the geographic and economic landscape of North Dakota.

The state is awash in jobs, money, opportunity and enough self-congratulating to last several lifetimes. “The oil is here! We’re all getting stinking rich!” scream the Republicans in Bismarck. “Aren’t we awesome?”

Well, maybe. But that doesn’t mean the rest of the nation wants to be a part of it.

A report by Job Service North Dakota last week showed the state has had at least 20,000 jobs available for six straight months. A state official said the numbers speak to the strength and growth of the state’s economy.

That is true, as far as it goes. The economy continues to boom and, in fairness, the state’s population has, too. Thousands of new “residents” (will they put down roots?) have boosted North Dakota’s population.

But six consecutive months of 20,000-plus job openings also speaks to a couple of concerns the state official conveniently left out.

No. 1, the state’s highly-touted campaign to attract workers to the state, announced in May by Lieutenant Gov. Drew Wrigley and others, is a flop. North Dakota entered into an $800,000 public-private partnership with oil giant Hess Corp. to recruit workers. Perhaps the idea of providing housing, and possibly even affordable housing, in the Bakken should be a top priority of the state. It’s awfully tough to recruit somebody when you have nowhere for them to live.

And No. 2, North Dakota remains a tough sell to the rest of the nation and the world.

Even if there are jobs, money and opportunity, people have to want to live somewhere before they’ll move there. And, historically, people have not wanted to live in North Dakota. Hence, that’s why the 2013 population was estimated at about 725,000 souls by the U.S. Census bureau. Seems as if there are 725,000 people every square mile in Florida.

But North Dakota is not Florida. It is isolated, cold and sparsely populated. There are not big cities. Or 10,000 lakes. Or the Pacific Ocean. Or mountains. Or forests. That has not changed with the oil boom. That will never change, no matter how many oil wells are drilled in the west.

I know several young people in the Twin Cities who are looking for jobs. I’ve told them about all the jobs available in North Dakota, not just in the Oil Patch but in Fargo and Grand Forks. Jobs in the health-care industry or technology sector. Good jobs, with relatively decent pay. Certainly better than no jobs with zero pay.

“You should check it out,” I say.

They just laughed.

“I’m not moving there,” they say.

And these are people from Minneapolis-St. Paul, which isn’t exactly a tropical paradise.

It’s a hurdle that North Dakota will never be able to overcome; no matter how many times the state is named at the top of some internet list for “best quality of life” or “best job opportunities.”

It’s the same problem North Dakota’s always had. At one point in history, it led to the outmigration of young people. That has changed. Now, not enough people are moving here rapidly enough. It’s a better problem to have, I suppose.

But it is reminiscent of journalist Eric Sevareid’s famous words of North Dakota being “a large, rectangular blank spot on the nation’s mind.”

Here is Sevareid’s entire passage that included the well-known phrase. It still holds true today in many ways, even though North Dakota has oil, money, jobs and opportunity:

North Dakota. Why have I not returned for so many years? Why have so few from those prairies ever returned? Where is its written chapter in the long and varied American story? In distant cities when someone would ask: “Where are you from?” and I would answer: “North Dakota,” they would merely nod politely and change the subject, having no point of common reference. They knew no one else from there. It was a large, rectangular blank spot on the nation’s mind. I was that kind of child who relates to reality books, and in the books I found so little about my native region. In the geography, among pictures of Chicago’s skyline, Florida’s palms, and the redwoods of California, there was one small snapshot of North Dakota. It showed a waving wheatfield. I could see that simply by turning my head to the sixth-grade class window. Was that all there was, all we had? Perhaps the feeling had been communicated by my mother, but very early I acquired a sense of having no identity in the world, of inhabiting, by some cruel mistake, an outland, a lost and forgotten place upon the far horizon of my country. Sometimes when galloping a barebacked horse across the pastures in pursuit of some neighbor’s straying cattle, I had for a moment a sharp sense of the prairie’s beauty, but it always died quickly away, and the more unattainable places of the books were again more beautiful, more real.

(Mike McFeely is a talk-show host on 790 KFGO-AM. His show can be heard weekdays from 2-5 p.m. Follow him on Twitter @MikeMcFeelyKFGO.)