Employment Impacts of Upstream Oil and Gas Investment in the United States

By Mark Agerton, Peter Hartley, Kenneth Medlock III, Ted Temzelides

February 11, 2015

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Format: Chicago

Mark Agerton, Peter Hartley, Kenneth Medlock III, and Ted Temzelides. Employment Impacts of Upstream Oil and Gas Investment in the United States, (USA: International Monetary Fund, 2015) accessed November 21, 2024

Disclaimer: This Working Paper should not be reported as representing the views of the IMF.The views expressed in this Working Paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the IMF or IMF policy. Working Papers describe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to elicit comments and to further debate

Summary

Technological progress in the exploration and production of oil and gas during the 2000s has led to a boom in upstream investment and has increased the domestic supply of fossil fuels. It is unknown, however, how many jobs this boom has created. We use time-series methods at the national level and dynamic panel methods at the state-level to understand how the increase in exploration and production activity has impacted employment. We find robust statistical support for the hypothesis that changes in drilling for oil and gas as captured by rig-counts do in fact, have an economically meaningful and positive impact on employment. The strongest impact is contemporaneous, though months later in the year also experience statistically and economically meaningful growth. Once dynamic effects are accounted for, we estimate that an additional rig-count results in the creation of 37 jobs immediately and 224 jobs in the long run, though our robustness checks suggest that these multipliers could be bigger.

Subject: Agroindustries, Commodities, Economic sectors, Employment, Labor, Oil, Oil prices, Population and demographics, Prices

Keywords: Agroindustries, Boom state, Employment, Employment activity, Employment consequence, Employment growth, Employment impact, Employment multiplier, Employment response, Job creation, North America, Oil, Oil prices, State employment, WP

Publication Details

Pages:

36
Volume:

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DOI:

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Issue:

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Series:

Working Paper No. 2015/028
Stock No:

WPIEA2015028
ISBN:

9781498376068
ISSN:

1018-5941

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