Two Drilling Counties Lead The Nation In Job Growth

• Scott Detrow
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  Scott Detrow is a congressional correspondent for NPR. He also co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast.
  
  Detrow joined NPR in 2015 to cover the presidential election. He focused on the Republican side of the 2016 race, spending time on the campaign trail with Donald Trump, and also reported on the election's technology and data angles.
  
  Detrow worked as a statehouse reporter for member stations WITF in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and KQED in San Francisco, California. He has also covered energy policy for NPR's StateImpact project, where his reports on Pennsylvania's hydraulic fracturing boom won a DuPont-Columbia and national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2013.

The drilling hotbed of Washington County saw a 4.3 percent increase in employment, between March 2010 and March 2011. That’s the third-highest spike in the country, according to data released today by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Butler County follows close behind, with a 4.2 percent increase. That’s good for sixth, nationally.
Both counties are among the most active in the state, when it comes to Marcellus Shale drilling. Nearly 80 new wells were drilled in Washington County between January and July 2011, according to Department of Environmental Protection data included in the Marcellus Shale Advisory Commission’s report. More than 20 were tapped in Butler.

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