Survey Shows a Third of Oil and Gas Workers Faced Pay Cuts in 2020 Due to Pandemic

January 12, 2021

A worldwide survey showed on Tuesday, almost a third of workers in the oil and gas industry faced pay cuts in 2020 as the coronavirus drove down fuel demand and prices.

A majority of the oil and gas workers questioned said they felt less secure about their jobs than a year ago. This isn’t a huge shock since salaries in the sector are closely tied to oil prices, which plummeted last year as demand for fuel dropped dramatically.

Reuters reports:

Job security was low across all energy sectors, with 78% of oil and gas workers feeling less secure than a year ago about their jobs. That figure fell to 66% for those working in renewables and 59% of those working in nuclear power.

Oil and gas firms have cut jobs to survive what is expected to be a long stretch of weak demand. Rystad Energy consultancy said in October more than 400,000 industry jobs had been cut up to that point of 2020, half of them in the United States, where there is a heavy focus on costly shale oil output.

“Based on our knowledge and insight into the shale market in the United States, this was one of the hardest hit areas in the world for the pandemic,” Airswift Chief Executive Janette Marx told Reuters.

Although the energy industry has faced many hardships over the past year, American oil and gas workers have still provided reliable and affordable energy to households nationwide. Now with the Covid-19 vaccine, the energy industry once again steps up by powering the transport of the vaccine across the country.

We hope the Biden administration remembers not only the vital functions of the industry, but also the tens of millions of Americans whose jobs depend on it. Our oil and gas industry deserves to be supported after everything they have been hit with this year, not further torn down.