As oil prices rise and demand recovers, the U.S. oil industry is raising drilling and completion activity and has started to re-hire workers it had dismissed at the peak of last year’s crisis. But not all former employees want to return to the sector—some have quit oil for good and don’t want to look back at an industry notorious for its cyclical ups and downs. Despite the recent uptick in oil industry employment, short-term and permanent shifts in workers’ negative perceptions of the sector have already started to create labor shortages. These shortages threaten to delay and even hinder the recovery of U.S. oil production, analysts say. The EIA currently estimates that American crude oil production is set to jump to an average of 11.8 million barrels per day (bpd) in 2022, up from 11.1 million bpd in 2021. Not All Jobs Lost Will Return Job losses in the […]