Energy is one of the American economy’s few bright spots. That’s the conclusion of a new analysis of employment trends put together by Raymond James Financial Inc.
For a sense of how significant the energy sector’s contribution could be, consider that Raymond James predicts energy will help reduce the current U.S. unemployment rate from 7.3 percent to 6.1 percent by the end of 2015.
“To be clear, growing energy employment will not be sufficient to single-handedly restore pre-crisis employment levels,” the report states. “But it has been a leading driver of the U.S. employment growth that has occurred over the past few years.”
That strong performance should continue for a number of years, as the most recent study on shale energy from consulting group IHS makes clear.
By 2020, as many as 3.3 million new jobs will be supported by so-called unconventional oil and natural gas. These include direct jobs in developing new oil and natural gas resources from shale. But they also include the indirect and induced employment that ripples out from the oil patch.
More than 460,000 combined manufacturing jobs will be supported by shale energy development by 2020. These range from industries like petrochemical production to steel to construction.
IHS Chairman Daniel Yergin doesn’t call shale an energy story as much as “a very big economic story that flows throughout the U.S. economy in a way that is only now becoming apparent.”
Given how energy is foundational for all aspects of a modern economy, it could hardly be otherwise.
