When Oil Prices Rebound, Will There Be Enough Workers To Fill The Jobs?

The investment bank, Goldman Sachs expects the U.S. oil and gas industry will hire tens of thousands of workers over the next few years when oil prices bounce back, but will it be that easy?

President of the Louisiana Oil and Gas Association Don Briggs doesn’t think so, because gas prices are still low and the majority of the 26,000 workers in the industry that were laid off have already found new jobs.

“Losing our workforce and recovering is going to be a very difficult thing and it’s going to take time to make all of that happen.”

Briggs says a lot of people who lost their jobs are thinking there is no way I’m going to get back into the industry after going through such a hard time. He expects we’re going to have just as hard of a time bouncing back as we did from the 80s oil bust.

“I think that we’re going to see more layoffs and I think that recovery here in Louisiana is going to be much slower than Goldman Sachs is predicting.”

Briggs says a lot of the recovery will be in the oil shale plays and we really don’t have those in Louisiana. He says the state is looking at record low oil rig counts right now.

“We have never ever been anywhere close to the low rig counts that we have today especially in the Gulf of Mexico.”