Permian Upstream Hiring Up 25% Since September 2020

Upstream oil and gas employment in the Permian Basin has climbed 25% since September 2020, according to reporting from the Midland Reporter-Telegram. The figure puts the region's drilling-and-production workforce on a faster recovery curve than most other U.S. labor markets over the same window.

What "upstream" actually means here

Upstream is the front end of the petroleum business: the geologists, drilling crews, well tenders, and roustabouts who find crude and pull it out of the ground. The Midland Reporter-Telegram, the daily paper that covers the West Texas and southeastern New Mexico oil patch, has tracked the segment's hiring since the pandemic-era crash bottomed out in late 2020.

September 2020 was the practical starting line. WTI crude had spent part of April 2020 trading below zero, rigs had stacked by the hundreds, and the upstream workforce had thinned sharply from its pre-pandemic peak. Every percentage point since then is recovery from a depressed base, not net job creation on a normal cycle.

Why the rebound has compounded

Three forces are stacked inside that 25%. Permian rig counts returned to and then exceeded pre-pandemic levels as oil prices recovered through 2021 and 2022.

Wells also need crews of frac hands, wireline operators, and pumpers even after the drill bit moves on, so employment persists past the active drilling phase.

And the basin keeps adding wells. Permian crude output set records in recent years, so the segment now needs more workers per square mile than at any prior point in its history. From the pre-pandemic peak to the September 2020 trough, upstream payrolls fell further than 25%, meaning today's climb still leaves the segment under its prior cycle high.

What it means for a worker

For someone weighing a move to the oil patch, the practical signal is timing. Crews in the Permian are hiring, and wages for field roles have moved up alongside headcount.

Service companies — the contractors that staff rigs, frac spreads, and roustabout crews — typically post the first openings in a cycle, before operators expand their own corporate ranks. The Reporter-Telegram's 25% reading is a segment-wide figure, and service-company payrolls have historically swung harder than operator payrolls across the same window.

Two cautions are worth flagging. The 25% headline does not come with an absolute job count in the published reporting, so the public data cannot say how many upstream workers now work the basin. And upstream hiring is the first part of the oil-and-gas value chain to slow when rigs stack, so the segment's volatility cuts both ways.

Where the trend points next

Permian rig count has held above its 2019 baseline for most of the past two years, and most operators now publish capital plans that assume flat-to-modestly-rising activity through 2025. Holding rigs flat while output grows is the productivity story that has defined the basin since the late 2010s, and it means upstream headcount can keep expanding without a fresh drilling boom. Expect the Reporter-Telegram's 25% climb to keep stretching as long as rig counts hold.