Comments on: Rep. Tom Price Claims Offshore Drilling Would Create 36 Million Jobs

By: Pete Dooley

Pete Dooley — Sat, 16 May 2009 09:34:46 +0000

I recently explained to a young guy laid off from an internationally owned company who's products are all made in in China (wait they moved to Thailand it was getting too expensive in China!). Each product he enthusiastically sold, that was not made in the U.S. took another few dollars permanently out of our economy, thus sealing his fate and Millions and Millions of other workers, trades people, pizza shops, car repair shops, available spendable cash across the country. It is apparent that in this convoluted world we live in the greedy corporate hacks in the oil companies will use this simple (above) fact to mesmerize a desperate populace into destroying more of our environment.

By: not quite

not quite — Sat, 16 May 2009 07:57:57 +0000

If you send 10,000 people to drill off coast, where are they ordering pizza from? I can't think of a single pizza parlor that delivers by helicopter.

By: Derek Williams

Derek Williams — Sat, 16 May 2009 03:12:02 +0000

You will want to check your math 36 million times 50,000 is 1.8 trillion. (3.6 e7 * 5e4 = 1.8 e12). So yes Tom Price is way way off.
-Derek

By: Get Real

Get Real — Sat, 16 May 2009 02:44:16 +0000

The same statistical formula that enabled the White House to claim that 1.5 million jobs were saved since the bail-out legislation was passed.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Sat, 16 May 2009 00:09:23 +0000

It's probably an extreme estimate, but there are jobs outside the industry that would be created by the activity. If you send 10,000 people to drill off the coast, then those 10,000 people order pizza for lunch, you've created jobs in the pizza delivery industry, not just the oil and gas industry. Extrapolate that out to some mildly tenuous spin-offs and you get a much higher number than 10,000. Also, look at the 30 years. If you create 10,000 jobs in year 1, and you have 10,000 in year 2, is that just 10,000 jobs, or is it another 10,000 for a total of 20,000?
The best way to estimate the jobs created it just to look at the money and assume that it all buys goods and services somewhere along the line. So 36 million jobs times $50,000 per job is $60,000,000,000 (60 billion) per year. So if you invest $60 B or generate $60 B in revenue per year with that drilling, then the number 36 million jobs is accurate. I have no idea if $60B per year is at all realistic for production on the OCS (probably not), but that's how you arrive at this kind of number. It has nothing to do with number of people currently employed directly in the oil and gas extraction industry.