AUSTIN–Last year showed steady recovery for upstream oil and gas employment in Texas and new data from the Texas Workforce Commission confirms that this climb continues. In January 2022, Texas upstream jobs grew by 1,200. Since the low point in employment in September of 2020, job growth months outnumbered decline months 14-to-2 with an average growth of 1,206 jobs per month over that same period.
At 176,300 upstream jobs, January 2022 jobs are up by 16,000, or 10%, from January of 2021. Since the low point in September of 2020, industry has added 19,300 Texas upstream jobs.
“In Fiscal Year 2021, the oil and natural gas industry directly employed over 422,000 Texans with jobs that pay among the highest wages in Texas and we should all be encouraged to see this upward trend continue in 2022,” said Todd Staples, president of the Texas Oil and Gas Association. “For every direct job, an additional 2.2 indirect jobs are created elsewhere in the economy, which means you don’t have to be employed by the oil and natural gas industry to benefit from the tremendous economic prosperity and opportunities the industry brings Texas.”
The upstream sector involves oil and natural gas extraction and excludes other industry sectors such as refining, petrochemicals, fuels wholesaling, oilfield equipment manufacturing, pipelines, and gas utilities, which support hundreds of thousands of additional jobs in Texas. The employment shown also includes “Support Activities for Mining,” which is mostly oil and gas-related but also includes some small amount of other types of mining.
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