Fracking carries with it many major economic incentives including the potential for thousands of new jobs. Fracking around the Marcellus Shale alone accounts for one out of every 249 jobs in the state of Pennsylvania, or about 30,000 people. In the nation as a whole, oil and gas employment makes up around one two-hundredth of the jobs in the United States, or about 569,000 people in 2012. These numbers represent direct employment as a result of this industry itself. The number of jobs provided by fracking further down the employment line increases dramatically. These jobs include truckers, street workers, and general construction workers, and include around 300,000 people. However, some of these reported numbers may be misleading. When looking at the whole of the United States, for example, the number of jobs provided by the entire oil and gas industry amounts to very little when one takes into account the number of employed persons in the country. Furthermore, some of the not directly related jobs associated with fracking are so distantly connected that it would be hard to definitively link them to the Marcellus Shale. The lesson to be taken from this is that the correlation between fracking of the Marcellus Shale and job creation is not as clear-cut a concept as it would seem. Given the variety of stakeholders, each argument has a vested interest and a corresponding bias
Sources
US Fracking Jobs are on a 24-Month Hot Streak
Fracking 101: Breaking Down the Most Important Part of Today’s Oil, Gas Drilling
Leave a Reply