Shale Exploration And Production Causes Major Job Boom In The United States

As expected, the recent increase in shale production and exploration has caused a major increase in job creation in the oil and gas industry, recent reports show. According to data released by the Energy Information Administration and the U.S. Department of Labor, over a six year period ending in 2012, industry employment jumped 40%, or approximately 162,000 jobs. By comparison, the entire private sector in America grew by just 1%, or approximately one million jobs.
The Labor Department numbers show that the job creation seen in the “extraction” and “support” subcategories of the industry have grown the most. Extraction jobs, which range from exploration through some aspects of production, grew by nearly 40%. Similarly, support jobs, which are limited to areas like excavation and well construction and maintenance, and do not include housing and manufacturing data, grew by approximately 55% between 2007 and 2012.
The growth in industry employment is necessary to sustain the nation’s rising energy production; over the same six-year period, domestic crude oil production grew 39%, while natural gas production increased by 25%.