The rise in oil prices moved in tight correlation with the hiring at companies at the heart of the U.S. oil production-Houston-where hiring jumped by 12.4 percent annually in May 2018, picking up in synch with the oil price rally, according to the monthly LinkedIn Workforce Report published on Wednesday.
The report, which examines the monthly employment trends U.S.-wide and in the 20 largest metro areas, showed that hiring in the oil and energy industry rose by 5.2 percent in the U.S. over the past year.
Nationally, across all industries, gross hiring in the United States was 4.5 percent higher than in May 2017, the report found.
"As Houston's job market has rebounded, the surplus of people with skills typically needed to fuel the oil and energy industry-like petroleum engineering, energy, and geology skills-has reduced, from over 16,000 people in February 2016, to under 14,000 people in February 2018. This is another signal that hiring is starting to pick up in a meaningful way for Houstonians as its core industry restabilizes," the report said.
Houston jobs grew at a strong annualized pace of 4.7 percent over the three months ending in April, the Dallas Fed said in its Houston Economic Indicators report last week. Manufacturing, partly driven by rising oil and gas activity, recorded the fastest growth rate in the period.
Related: Will Saudi Arabia Listen To U.S. Demands For More Oil?
Elsewhere in Texas, Odessa and Midland at the heart of the Permian basin in West Texas are experiencing an economic boom with the higher oil prices and increased activity over the past year.
The combined Midland-Odessa unemployment rate has plunged over the last year, to stand at 2.8 percent in March, matching the record-low from March 2008, InghamEcon said in report on Q1 2018 last month. The first-quarter unemployment rate also averaged 2.8 percent-the lowest on record. The Midland-Odessa labor market is extremely tight and is only becoming more so with each passing month, according to the report.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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Tsvetana is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing for news outlets such as iNVEZZ and SeeNews. More