The Wall Street Journal reported that West Texas is one of the hottest job markets in the United States, where barbers are earning as much as $180,000 a year.
An oil boom that has taken hold over the Permian Basin is pushing the economic activity and expansion, the area can barely keep pace.
The Wall Street Journal reported that barbers in Pecos are charging a minimum of $40 for a haircut and are busy working for hours and hours.
Many schools in the regions in and around Midland are getting a hard time hiring teachers because housing prices have risen very high. WSJ reports that some districts have taken to building their own housing on school property to attract teachers to move to the area.
The thousands of oil field workers bring additional foot traffic to the area’s sparse towns and cities. It’s easy to see that many restaurants are no longer frequented by local residents.
Oil field workers line up outside before the restaurants open, and diners often close for the day because they ran out of food.
Most of the local businesses are losing their workers to higher-paying oil field jobs, leaving them hard-pressed to serve a growing base of customers.
The enormous growth in the Permian Basin oil field is symbolic of the boom happening across the American oil industry that is outpacing every experts’ predictions.
In a January report, The International Energy Agency predicted that U.S. oil production would rise by 1.3 million barrels a day in 2019, which is more than double its previous expectation.
“By the middle of the year, U.S. crude output will probably be more than the capacity of either Saudi Arabia or Russia,” the report said, meaning the U.S. will be able to produce enough oil in six months to surpass what Russia or Saudi Arabia could produce in a year.
Back in September, The U.S. passed Saudi Arabia and Russia to become the world’s largest oil producer.
