Notwithstanding the oilfield’s inevitable ups and downs, the jobs and hiring situations here and in Midland and the Permian Basin remain strong.
With the Texas Oil & Gas Association reporting very strong gains, Permian Basin Workforce Development Board CEO Willie Taylor says the region has almost recovered from the doldrums of the pandemic.
“Odessa’s rate of unemployment is 4.8 percent and Midland’s is 3.6 with 5 percent being full employment,” Taylor said Tuesday. “Our civilian workforce has increased from 73,000 in Ector County a year ago to 81,000 now and in Midland County it has gone from 101,000 to 104,000.
“The Basin continues to see an uptick in its workforce and oil and gas are leading the way. We’re real close to the numbers we had prior to COVID.”
Taylor said most of the hiring has been by Halliburton, Patterson Drilling, Schlumberger and other service companies. “But it’s in all sectors, health care, transportation, construction and education,” he said.
“There’s a shortage of teachers all over the Permian Basin right now and statewide. There are 12 million jobs available across the United States. It’s a job-seeker’s market.”
Citing statistics reported by the Texas Workforce Commission, TXOGA President Todd Staples said from Austin that Texas’s upstream or production sector oil and natural gas employment grew by 6,100 jobs from May to June, “which was the highest monthly increase in data history, surpassing the previous record growth of 5,600 jobs in June 2011.
“The Texas oil and natural gas industry continues to respond to meet the energy needs of Americans and allies across the globe,” Staples said. “Demand for oil is forecast to continue growing in 2022 and into 2023, so our nation must support certainty and consistent opportunities for domestic production, pipelines and processing of the products our nation and the world depend upon.”
Since oilfield employment bottomed out at the height of the pandemic in September 2020, Staples said, the industry has added an average of 1,805 jobs per month for a total bump of 37,900 since then.
“At 194,900 upstream jobs, June 2022’s jobs were up by 31,000, or 18.9 percent, from June of 2021,” he said.
