A number of states that had enjoyed booming economies due to growing oil production are now feeling the sting of cheaper oil. Oil prices fell from roughly one hundred and ten dollars a barrel last June to around sixty dollars more recently. In Oklahoma, employment in the state’s mining and logging sector, which mostly encompasses oil and gas drilling, declined for a fifth consecutive month in April.
Wyoming has also shed employment in that sector for five straight months. Texas lost eighty three hundred jobs in that industry in April, the most in six years according to the Associated Press. The impacts of cheaper oil have also begun to impact broader macroeconomies. In total, Texas added twelve hundred jobs in April; that compares to an average monthly increase of thirty four thousand last year. In March, Texas actually lost more than twenty five thousand jobs.
Large oil companies have announced thousands of job cuts this year. Halliburton announced that it has laid off nine thousand workers or more than ten percent of its workforce during a recent six-month period. Schlumberger has announced twenty thousand job cuts since the beginning of the year and Baker Hughes will eliminate seven thousand positions, or about eleven percent of its workforce.
