Oil and gas jobs down 26 percent since 2014

• Marie Cusick
  BioRecent Stories

  

  Marie Cusick was the Harrisburg reporter for StateImpact Pennsylvania.

Jobs in the oil and gas industry are down 26 percent since peaking two years ago, according to an analysis released Friday by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).
Nationwide, employment peaked at 538,000 jobs in October 2014 and has declined since then, amounting to a loss of 142,000 jobs through May 2016.
“Not all production jobs are directly related to drilling—the majority of the jobs are actually for extraction or support activities, which include the operations of drilled wells, exploration, excavation, well surveying, casing work, and well construction,” says the EIA. “This also includes the maintenance of already producing wells.”
Despite declining employment, production has remained strong. In Pennsylvania, for example, gas production increased in 2015, despite a drop in the number of new wells.
This EIA graph shows monthly production climbing, even as the number of rigs plummeted.

The most recent data from the state Department of Labor and Industry shows a 19 percent drop in Pennsylvania’s oil and gas jobs in the third quarter of 2015, compared to the same period in 2014.

Editor's Picks