During the September 19 edition of Fox News’ Fox & Friends, host Ainsley Earhardt falsely claimed that the fracking industry supports “423,000 jobs in the state of Pennsylvania.” There is no credible evidence to support this figure. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, direct oil and gas production jobs in Pennsylvania numbered about 12,000 in 2023.
Fox & Friends host pushes wildly inflated Pennsylvania fracking jobs estimate
BLS numbers put oil and gas production jobs in the state at 12,000 in 2023
Written by Allison Fisher
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From the September 19, 2024, edition of Fox & Friends
The number Earhardt cited is also more than three times larger than the figure a Trump campaign ad cites. The ad falsely claims 120,000 jobs would be lost if Harris were elected, even though presidents cannot ban fracking on state and private lands, where the vast majority of fracking occurs.
As a local journalist pointed out in a fact check aimed at Trump’s fracking ad, the 120,000 figure refers to an industry study by the Marcellus Shale Coalition that combines direct jobs in the industry and “estimates for jobs that the authors claim … would not exist if not for oil and gas production.”
In reality, the journalist goes on to explain:
The state of Pennsylvania reported about 26,000 direct jobs in the oil and gas industry in 2020, less than 1% of all jobs in the state. Four years later, that number is even smaller. Despite an increase in production post pandemic, jobs in the industry have not kept up, according to a recent report from E&E News, which cites the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics in which direct oil and gas production jobs in Pennsylvania was about 12,000 in 2023.
An early study on job creation from Penn State University, published in 2010 and paid for by the industry, said that by 2020, industry jobs would top 200,000 – it’s unclear if the study intended those to be direct or indirect. But six years later, another study from Penn State, with different authors, reported about 26,000 direct industry jobs, half of which were filled by out-of-state residents.
In fact, not only has the industry “shed thousands of workers in the state since 2019,” but it also has failed to deliver the wealth promised to many communities burdened with fracking wells. Meanwhile, “clean energy industries employ more than 8 times more PA workers than the state’s gas industry.”
Additionally, earlier in the program, host Lawrence Jones suggested that the oil and gas industry makes job cuts at “election time” based on “who is winning in the election” and “what the policies are,” but presidential policies have little impact on fracking that is done on state and private land, and evidence shows most energy-related job loss is due to automation in the industry.
The United States is pumping out more oil and gas than any country in history. But even as production soars, oil field employment keeps shrinking.
The decadelong decline isn’t driven by climate policy or the rise in clean energy. Instead, it’s the result of boom-and-bust cycles — and the fossil fuel industry’s relentless push for efficiency.
“You just need fewer workers to produce more oil,” said Greg Upton, executive director of Louisiana State University’s Center for Energy Studies.