The US oil and gas industry’s total employment impact to the national economy in 2015, combining operational and capital investment impacts, amounted to 10.3 million full-time and part-time jobs and accounted for 5.6% of total US employment, according to a study commissioned by the American Petroleum Institute and conducted by PwC LLP.
The jobs total included a 500,000 increase between 2011-15, encompassing both the shale boom and the onset of a downturn in oil and gas prices that began in the summer of 2014. Despite a down year, the industry’s total impact on US GDP in 2015 was $1.3 trillion, accounting for 7.6% of the national total.
At the national level, each direct job in the oil and gas industry supported an additional 2.7 jobs elsewhere in the US economy in 2015, the study indicates. Counting direct, indirect, and induced impacts, the industry’s total impact on labor income, including proprietors’ income, was $714 billion, or 6.7% of national labor income in 2015.
The total number of jobs directly or indirectly attributable to industry operations—not counting any capital investment impacts—ranged from a low of 11,800 in the District of Columbia to nearly 2 million in Texas in 2015.
The top 15 states in terms of the percentage of jobs directly or indirectly attributable to industry operations in 2015 were Oklahoma (16.6%), Wyoming (14.4%), North Dakota (13.3%), Texas (12.2%), Louisiana (11%), Alaska (9.7%), New Mexico (8.3%), West Virginia (7.8%), Kansas (6.8%), Colorado (6.5%), Nebraska (6.3%), Montana (6%), Mississippi (5.3%), Arkansas (4.8%), and Pennsylvania (4.3%).
According data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average wage paid by the oil and gas industry, excluding retail station jobs, in 2016 was $101,181, nearly 90% more than the national average.
