The US oil and gas industry slashed 40% of its workforce over the past decade of record-breaking production — and those jobs are unlikely to return.
In an industry known for its booms and busts, higher oil prices have historically spurred greater drilling activity, and therefore more hiring. But this link broke after years of poor returns to investors following the bursting of the shale bubble in the mid-2010s.
New technologies to drill faster for cheaper, corporate mergers and robots replacing humans on rigs resulted in the disappearance of some 250,000 jobs since the sector’s employment peaked in 2014. Production surged 50% during that time.
In 2025, even as output reached new highs and a pro-drilling president returned to the White House, payrolls are hovering at the lowest level in three years.
“This industry has always been cyclical. You ride the wave when it’s good, and you brace for the downturn,” said Karr Ingham, president of the Texas Alliance of Energy Producers. “But what’s different now is, even when prices recover, we don’t see the same hiring bounce we used to.”
That means fewer career opportunities for people like Shaun Carter, a geologist who was laid off when the Oklahoma-based exploration and production company he was working for in 2019 unexpectedly shuttered.
Carter took up truck driving out of Houston — crisscrossing the Southeast and Midwest — assuming it would be temporary. More than six years later, he’s still driving, and his dreams of returning to the industry are fading.
“My hopes aren’t very high,” Carter said, calling from his truck while waiting at a loading dock.
In the years after the 2014 oil price crash, investors pushed companies to focus on profits instead of growth, triggering a wave of consolidation and job losses. Mergers and acquisitions activity in the sector has exceeded $500 billion since the start of 2023, according to Bloomberg calculations, more than a 20% increase compared with the prior three years. Major players continued to reduce headcount in the past year as crude prices fell, with Chevron Corp., ConocoPhillips and Exxon Mobil Corp. all announcing job cuts in 2025.