Texas lost 8,300 oil jobs last month — the biggest decline in that sector in six years and the fourth straight month of such job losses. The last time Texas saw this big of a drop in the oil industry was April 2009, during the last recession, when 10,500 jobs were lost. Before that, the biggest loss was in July 1986, during the last big oil crisis, with a drop of 9,000 jobs.
“I don’t think there’s any surprise that those numbers are starting to show given the fact that oil prices are still 40 percent lower than a year ago and the rig count is still half of what it was a year ago,” said Bud Weinstein, an energy economist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. “We’ve seen 150,000 announced layoffs by large oil and related companies.”
Texas-based companies, such as Baker Hughes and Halliburton, have announced tens of thousands of layoffs this year, but the employment numbers tend to lag the news of layoffs.