WASHINGTON — A plunge in global energy prices that has put some North Dakota oil rigs in a deep freeze has yet to chill the state’s hiring climate.
By almost any metric — the jobless rate, payrolls, claims for unemployment benefits — there is scant evidence to indicate the state at the epicenter of the U.S. shale-oil boom is about to stumble.
With memories still fresh in their minds of how difficult it was to find help, energy-industry employers in the fourth-smallest state by population probably won’t be quick to dismiss staff. Even those people who are let go may find their skills are transferable, filling positions to finish infrastructure projects long delayed by a worker shortage.
“This won’t be a bust,” Harold Hamm, founder and chief executive officer of Continental Resources Inc., the largest leaseholder and producer in the Bakken shale play of North Dakota and Montana, said in a Jan. 28 interview with Bloomberg. “There’s plenty to do.”
At 2.8 percent in December, North Dakota’s jobless rate has been little changed since July and is the lowest of any state in the U.S. It had been as low as 2.5 percent in April, a record in data going back to 1976. Its payrolls grew by 24,500 workers last year, or 5.4 percent — the biggest percentage increase of any state.
Job openings were up 17 percent last month from January 2013, according to data released Wednesday from the state’s labor department. There were 0.5 unemployed North Dakotans per opening in December, the latest month data were available. Vacancies have outnumbered the state’s jobless since June 2011.
For North Dakota, the challenge is keeping those workers who streamed in to take advantage of oil-industry positions paying better-than-average wages. As labor-market conditions improve in their former states, those “commuter” workers could find themselves being drawn back, said Michael Ziesch, manager of North Dakota’s Labor Market Information Center.
Businesses upbeat
At the end of 2014, the state had 476,200 people on nonfarm payrolls, up 29 percent from 2009 and almost four times the 8 percent increase in the national workforce over the same period, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
To be sure, Ziesch and his data-watching colleagues project there will be some loss of jobs in the energy industry, though it may not show up for another couple months, when it becomes easier to separate changes induced by the slump in oil prices from the influence of harsh weather, he said.
In the meantime, business owners such as Simon Chan remain upbeat about prospects. The Los Angeles transplant opened Basil, a sushi bar and Asian-fusion restaurant, in North Dakota’s energy-boom capital of Williston in September 2013. He decided to move there based on a tip from a customer after spending seven years in Casper, Wyo., another oil boomtown.
Chan has a help-wanted sign in the window even after a 15 percent drop-off in business since December that was larger than the typical post-holiday slowdown.
“Oil is just like stock — eventually, with time, it’ll go up,” he said.
