Oil and gas corporations say that curbing extraction will hurt employment, but new research shows they have increased production and fired workers at the same time.
Although oil and gas production increased in the United States from 2010 to 2020, new research out Wednesday reveals that last decade's boom coincided with a decline in drilling and fracking jobs—giving lie to the fossil fuel industry's claims about its positive impact on employment.
"Outlandish jobs claims have one goal: to hype the scope and impact of the oil and gas industry."
Industry proponents routinely fearmonger that reining in fossil fuels will have harmful economic effects. However, as Food & Water Watch (FWW) shows in its analysis of data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), "increased production does not actually guarantee more jobs." Oil and gas corporations have spent the past several years laying off workers while boosting extraction—and yet they continue to tout "bogus employment claims."
"A 2020 report from the American Petroleum Institute (API), an oil industry trade association, breathlessly warned that a ban on fracking and federal leasing for oil and gas extraction could cost 7.5 million jobs," FWW points out. "API's 2021 report claimed that the industry directly employs 2.5 million and supports 11.3 million jobs."
"In reality," researchers found, "in 2020 the oil and gas industry employed only 541,000 people nationally, which is less than 0.4% of all jobs in the United States."
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