Bloomberg : “Last year, about 198,000 workers were employed in oil and gas extraction, the most since 1987. Another 325,500 were working in the industry’s support services, the most since the Labor Department began tracking those figures in 1990.”  

“That’s likely to change this year.”  

“A report last week from global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas showed 20,193, or 38 percent, of the 53,041 announced job cuts in January were in the energy industry. Oilfield service company Schlumberger last month said it will eliminate 9,000 jobs; Baker Hughes and Halliburton have said they expect to cut 7,000 and 1,000 positions, respectively.”  

“The January job-cut announcements in the Challenger report are particularly stark when measured against data from the same month going back to 2004. Last month was more than seven times as bad as the next-worst January for energy industry layoffs, in 2009, when companies announced 2,590 job cuts.”