Woes Of The Energy Sector Compared To The Housing Industry

Employment in mining and logging is down 25 percent from 2014. The last few years in the energy sector has resembled what housing went through at the end of last decade, as Conor Sen from Bloomberg explains.

Smaller companies in both energy and housing struggled to survive downturns. And in terms of labor, both industries take from the same pool of workers. When housing jobs vanished, many laborers turned to energy. That has since flipped in recent years, when housing experienced a labor shortage.

Now, both sectors are trying to expand.

Employers are going to be fighting over workers, something they haven’t had to do in decades. Just as the price increases in housing have been driven by supply shortages and construction costs -- rather than the speculation and demand growth we saw in the mid-2000s -- we could see hikes in the price of oil and natural gas thanks to increases in production costs.

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