Which and how many of the jobs being created by the natural gas boom are going to Pennsylvanians vs. those from other states?

Question from: Jay Walker, Pittsburgh

• Marie Cusick
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  Marie Cusick was the Harrisburg reporter for StateImpact Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania’s Department of Labor and Industry does not track this information, and it can be difficult to nail down, because of how employment data is collected.

Anecdotally, many of the people who worked in the Marcellus Shale industry initially were from other parts of the country.

That’s because Pennsylvania largely lacked the trained workforce able to do those kinds of highly specialized jobs. It remains the case that jobs continue to go to out-of-state workers. For example, drive by a new natural gas pipeline construction site and you will see license plates from Oklahoma and Texas. However, gas companies have been making efforts to train Pennsylvanians for these jobs, and there’s little question the ranks of local workers has grown over the years.

The Marcellus Shale Coalition, a gas industry trade group, used to publish an annual workforce survey. In 2013, for example, coalition member companies said 60 percent of their new hires were from the region, compared to 57 percent in 2012.

Since the boom took off about a decade ago, employment in core industries related to oil and gas has more than tripled, going from 10,554 in 2008, to 30,515 workers in 2012, according to Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry data. The agency currently estimates 25,862 worked directly in the industry in 2017.

Those figures do not consider related jobs created by the surge in activity (for example, jobs at a new hotel or restaurant, built to serve the influx of workers).

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