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

August 16, 2013
Posted By: Jeffrey J. Junstrom

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%.

U.S. Department of Labor Awards Back Pay for Misclassified Employees

December 20, 2012
Posted By: Stephen A. Antonelli

The Associated Press is reporting that the United States Department of Labor has awarded back pay totaling $187,165 to sixty-nine employees of Groundwater and Environmental Services, Inc. The DOL, as part of an ongoing enforcement effort that has recently focused on the oil and gas industry, determined that GES violated the Fair Labor Standards Act when it misclassified certain employees, thereby improperly denying them overtime pay when they worked in excess of forty hours per week. The DOL also determined that GES failed to keep accurate records of hours worked by those employees, also a violation of the FLSA. GES claimed that the employees – many of whom are junior environmental scientists and junior baseline samplers based in Cranberry, Pennsylvania or Fairmont, West Virginia – were exempt from the FLSA’s overtime requirements on the grounds that they are professionals. The DOL disagreed, determining that the employees did not fall under the FLSA’s professional exemption because they are not required to have advanced knowledge to perform their jobs.

Top