UPDATE Pub. 3 2021-2022 Issue 1

I f you are having difficulties hiring, you aren’t alone. In 2016, a research report published by the American Petroleum Institute projected a need for 1.9 million new workers to replace retiring workers and accommodate growth. Then the pandemic shutdown started in March 2020. Job shortages have gotten increasingly worse since then. Many people predicted that labor shortages would end along with pandemic unemployment benefits in September 2021. That didn’t happen. A CNBC Global CFO Council survey for Q3 2021 found that 84% of CFOs globally are struggling to hire employees. At 95%, the U.S. percentage was even higher. According to a Wall Street Journal story published online Oct. 14, 2021, 4.3 million workers have left the job market, possibly for good, despite more than 10 million job openings. It is the biggest drop since World War II or longer. When the Wall Street Journal surveyed 52 economists about the drop, 22 thought the drop would be permanent. You can’t blame it on unemployment benefits, which have expired. But it is probably explained by other factors: • Population growth has slowed down. • Many people decided to retire, especially if they were already close to retirement age. This group accounts for approximately half the decline, according to an article by Daniel Bachman for Deloitte. • Child care and elder care are expensive and hard to find. (Child care affects more people than elder care, but both are factors.) If trusted friends or family can’t help, many parents have opted to have one parent stay home for at least a few years. • Some people have started businesses. • Others are waiting for the pandemic to subside more. According to Erica Groshen in an article for Business Economics, three groups were most likely to be affected by job loss: Hispanics, Blacks and women. The oil and gas industry faces specific challenges. Oil prices have been strongly affected by many different factors: the pandemic, geopolitical instability, policy changes affecting financial and environmental regulations, supply chains, and the need to improve value by changing portfolios. Diversity among employees is important in any industry, but it is especially important for companies that struggle to hire skilled employees and increase profits. If you need to fill jobs, but you only look at a subset of the available employees who could fill that job, you will have a harder time hiring than companies that don’t limit themselves. Gender diversity is especially important because there are slightly more women in the U.S. than there are men. Companies that actively hire women have more potential applicants they can consider because they are not automatically eliminating half the entire U.S. population. Diversity, Bringing Women and Minorities into the Industry 20 UP DATE