January 28, 2016
America’s
oil-and-gas boom has been a boon in innumerable ways, but its greatest value
might be the livelihoods it has given to men and women without college degrees.
From pump operators to truck drivers to roustabouts, the fracking revolution
generated a cornucopia of opportunities for folks who aren’t higher-education
material.
And now,
those jobs are hard to find.
Employment
in oil-and-gas extraction, according to the U.S.
Bureau of Labor Statistics
(BLS), peaked at 201,500. That was in October 2014. The workforce has tumbled
by 17,000 since. It’s safe to assume that a rebound isn’t imminent.
Low
prices have made work in the hydrocarbon industry, at least in the short term,
a bad bet. But that’s no reason for former and once-aspiring fracksters to
succumb to college-is-for everyone groupthink. Plenty of good-paying,
blue-collar gigs are available, and will be for many decades to come.
In a
development that protectionists can’t quite wrap their brains around, manufacturing
employment is
growing -- up 7.7 percent since its March 2010 bottoming-out. The rebound is
remarkable, given the Obama administration’s hyperkinetic ratcheting of energy
and environmental regulations. Factories of all kinds are hiring, but one
product that was never again to be “made in the U.S.A.” deserves mention. Cheap
natural has revived the chemical-manufacturing sector, which has been adding
jobs since the start of 2011. (Dow is advertising “many opportunities” in production
and maintenance.) And now that the U.S. has finally joined the global market
for energy, export-related positions at oil and liquefied natural gas terminals
are sure to proliferate.
Employers
in warehousing/logistics are concerned about a labor shortage, a problem exacerbated by
consumers’ growing preference for online shopping. The trucking subsector is staring down a severe crisis.
Last fall, Larry Mertz, operations director at JCI Transportation in Pennsauken
Township, New Jersey, told The Philadelphia Inquirer
that his firm “could double our fleet tomorrow” if it had enough drivers. Metro
Phoenix’s four biggest trucking companies are “each … seeking about 200
drivers,” The
Arizona Republic
reported in November.
Don’t
like sitting all day? Look into construction. Plenty of its employees got
burned in the housing bubble, but work is coming back. Last summer, the CEO of the
National Association of Home Builders called his industry’s labor shortage “an
epidemic.”
Tennessee’s
chapter of Associated General Contractors of America found that 90 percent of
its members are having difficulties in finding roofers, masons, and the like.
The president and CEO of Associated Builders and Contractors Florida Gulf Coast
called a lack of personnel the “biggest challenge facing the entire industry
right now.” Workers trained in its construction program, San Antonio’s St. Phillips College boasts, “are hired out there in
the workforce immediately, and they are making the money they were promised.”
It
hasn’t had the problem “in years,” The
Buffalo News marveled, but openings in the region’s building trades are so
numerous, retirees are being asked back, and recruitment is underway “from
outside the area: Rochester, the Southern Tier, Albany and, in an ironic
reversal of years of employment migration, as far away as Arizona and Las
Vegas.” A Missoula construction-crew chief told Montana Public Radio: “If you
aren’t working right now, it’s your own fault. Everybody who says they don’t
have a job -- if you go out and get some training you can pretty much write your
own ticket.”
Demand
for auto mechanics is strong, and likely to get stronger. Car sales in 2015, The Wall Street Journal reported, “jumped to a record, clearing a
peak last reached 15 years ago as cheap gasoline, employment gains and low
interest rates spurred Americans to snap up new vehicles.” (So much for
Millennials loving walking, bicycles, and government transit.) The mean hourly
wage for auto repair and maintenance, as determined by the BLS,
is $20.89. And as an instructor at Northeast Wisconsin Technical College in
Green Bay put it: “I never have a student say, “Oh,
I can’t find a job.’”
Few
politicians are willing to admit it, but college isn’t for everyone -- a truth
bolstered by higher education’s disturbingly high dropout rate, as well as the
sizable share of workers who have, but don’t need, sheepskins.
Surgery
grosses you out? Not interested in Proust?
Bored by discussions of dark
matter? Ignore
the economic and educational “experts.” There are promising career options for
people who eschew a college degree. (Or two. Or three.) Middle-class wages,
decent benefits, and job security are attainable via vocational certifications,
apprenticeships, and on-the-job training. Don’t believe anyone who tells you
otherwise.
D. Dowd Muska (www.dowdmuska.com) writes about government, economics, and technology. Follow him on Twitter @dowdmuska.
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