Posted on 07/20/2017 8:00:56 AM PDT by bananaman22
Like many industries today, the oil industry is trying to sell its many job opportunities to the fastest growing portion of the global workforce: Millennials. But unlike any other industry, oil and gas is facing more challenges in persuading the environmentally-conscious Millennials that oil is “cool”.
During the Super Bowl earlier this year, the American Petroleum Institute (API) launched an ad geared toward Millennials, who now make up the largest generation in the U.S. labor force.
“This ain’t your daddy’s oil”, the ad says, in what API described as “a modern look at how oil is integrated into products consumers use now and in the future supported by bold visuals.”
Despite its pitch to speak the Millennials’ language and reach out to the elusive generation, the ad sparked anger with many consumers and viewers.
(Excerpt) Read more at oilprice.com ...
Working in oil is hardly the most stable job; I don’t think this is just about getting dirty. Not too long ago we were reading about the economic collapse in areas dependent on oil revenues...
Articles like these are usually just propaganda for importing cheap foreign labor. "Jobs Americans won't do" is a self-fulfilling prophecy if an industry doesn't offer Americans job stability and decent wages/benefits.
While not dirty and dangerous, the highest paid undergraduates over the last 2 or 3 years has been petroleum engineer. Seems everyone wants to do environmental engineering, which seems a bit of a soft science to me. I notice many projects that have environmental engineers on them also have the hard corps engineer types to do the heavy work.
Even when your job isn't dependent on the price of oil, you either move up or you're laid off.
Ping Megan dear :)
I worked on an off-shore rig back in the seventies. Whereas I only worked the drill floor for a few weeks before I quit to return to school, it was the hardest physical labor I have ever done. Those guys are really tough.
Because it’s too “icky.” How can a millennial keep his fingernails pretty and smooth messing around in all that muck?
Landscaping gets dirt-y. But it was what I did as a teenager, and it seems no teens want to bother with that anymore.
Americans just are not hungry enough.
Well put, and so true. I thought we’d already imported all the Venezuelan oil workers...
"Now it's oil I'm after That's why I'm drilling down I'm a tool pusher from Snyder A little Nortwestern town ***I've drilled in Kilgore, Beaumont, Borger This is the best I've found I'll keep tool pushin' on a rotary rig Till I'm six feet underground"
Not sure what that means; in the business world it means you either take a promotion (read: work more hours, assume more responsibilities) or you cost too much...
In this modern age where we get to see the consequences on the previous generation and we’re thinking long term about our own lives from early on (we teach high school kids to save for retirement) who really wants a job where you’ll screw up your back by your 30s and be in pain for the rest of your life.
Yes. It is dirty and as a commodity the supply and demand has cycles.
Expect a big upside cycle as China and India will demand more oil/ energy for their increasing numbers when they gain middle class income.
Plus keeping America dependent on foreign oil....article cold have been from an OPEC plant.....
It is important to separate “jobs teens won’t do” from “jobs nobody offers to teens anymore”; as my children get older I see the disinterest many employers have, and who those employers hire instead. Seems they’d rather have an adult immigrant (even legal ones) they can exploit rather than an American of any age. Too many of these jobs have also become per-diem, where you find out each morning whether or not you’re working that day. Who can live with that lack of a schedule, not just in terms of managing your time but also your finances?
Apparently Amazon.com does that with their warehouse employees. It is aboutique building up the mega corps, crushing small businesses, and making America more like China, not a good thing.
I love the oil business. You can start at the bottom knowing nothing about nothing and there is no artificial limit to how far you can advance. You learn as you go. You run into people all the time in top positions who started at the bottom turning valves and turning wrenches.
And yet its hard to convince your average public school grad to go into it. They’ll starve at some retail job for years while their buddies, a couple of years in, are making three times what they are making. Or six times what they are making.
Roustabout is a tough dirty job, but used to pay probably 2X what comparable unskilled labor was paid in construction, farming, etc which are not easy work either. Biggest problem/perk was the schedule, I knew one guy in the 70s who’d work like 6 weeks in the Emirates than have 3 weeks off which he’d normally spend drinking and whoring in France ;-)
But there are lots of good-paying higher skilled “cleaner” jobs from upstream through downstream that are all enabled by a prosperous oil & gas industry. Jobs like instrument technician, wireline operator, pipeline operator and more which require specialized training but not a full engineering degree. You can be a rig manager with a high school education - if you know what the hell you’re doing. And the only way to get that kind of experience is to roll up your sleeves and work in the oil patch.
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