50% Of US Energy Industry Workforce - 500,000 - Will Retire Within 10 Years - Houston Chronicle

[hatrack]

WASHINGTON — Nearly half the workers in the energy sector — an estimated 500,000 — are slated to retire within the next decade, industry and government leaders say. Now, policymakers and industry executives are trying to grapple with this looming labor shortage at a time of increasing energy demand. "Too few potential workers are interested in careers in the energy industry," Assistant Labor Secretary Emily Stover DeRocco said Tuesday.

Appearing before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, DeRocco said: "Stereotyping of energy careers as low-skilled causes qualified workers, especially youth, to be unaware of the many highly skilled, well-paying career opportunities the industry has to offer."

Plagued by a history of repeated layoffs and a stigma against vocational training that has discouraged young people from seeking energy-related jobs, the sector's labor force is graying at a faster pace than the rest of U.S. industry.

Consider Colonial Pipeline Co., which operates a key network that transports gasoline and other refined products from Houston to New York. The average age of a Colonial employee is nearly 44, some five years older than the national average for U.S. industry, Norm Szydlowski, Colonial's president and chief executive officer, told the committee.

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http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/biz/5280053.html

[NC_Nurse]

1. I think nurses have them beat. I bet more than

50% of us will be gone.

[madrchsod]

2. the oil industry has been saying this for the last 4 years

they can not attract engineers to go into the "dirty field" of the petroleum industry. they have now set up schools for drilling rig workers. it`s a dirty job but someone has to do it...

[Manifestor_of_Light]

3. Repeated layoffs, cheapthink, poormouthing, no job security....

Boo fucking hoo to the oil and gas business. They always poormouth and always have. And a lot of people have decided they can't handle the stress of working in that business, whether oilfield worker or highly trained engineer or programmer.

[aquart]

4. Disrespecting blue collar work for decades didn't help?

When I was growing up, the children's books showed me daddies who were postmen, firemen, cops, milkmen and they were dads and great things to be. And one day all of that disappeared. And people who went to work in anything but an office were nothing. Then the office workers, the white collars became nothing because the only thing to be was the CEO or you were a loser.

I thought after 9/11, when the only people who mattered were the heroes digging with their hands, that all that might change, but no.

[Democrats_win]

5. In 1986, the oil industry collapsed. Plenty of workers, no work. Now it's boom times.

Oil was $10 per bbl. It was bad. Now it's bad for everyone else and good for the oil industry. Boom and bust, the heart of capitalism especially when it comes to natural resources.