In search of employment, some get by on less with their own businesses
Emily Malucci had been saving her pennies for a rainy day. She’d put a portion of every paycheck away for more than a year before being laid off from her job as a field engineer at Stingray Pressure Pumping in August 2019.
The pandemic and resulting recession lengthened her search for a job in the energy industry from weeks to months to a year and a half, outlasting her savings.
Malucci isn’t alone. The oil and gas industry was pummeled by the pandemic, losing an estimated 107,000 jobs in the past year, including nearly 60,000 oil exploration and production jobs in Texas. That coincided with the slow transition to cleaner energy that also threatens to slash jobs. As a result,
energy workers that endured the industry’s volatility are now more skeptical of its return and are making different plans, despite promises of jobs in green energy.
“It is critical that, to the extent policy is going to take steps to make sure the energy system is cleaner and greener as we move forward, it addresses the people who are potentially left behind,” said Kenneth Medlock, senior director at the Center for Energy Studies at Rice University’s Baker Institute. “Nobody wants to lack an opportunity because they spent their time learning how to do something that is being displaced.”
That includes Malucci.
‘A struggle ever since’
Malucci, a 26-year-old University of Tulsa graduate, moved back to Houston from Oklahoma in January 2020. Now living with her parents, she questions her decision to get a degree in petrochemical engineering.
“The whole time I was in college, everyone said I would never struggle to find a job,” Malucci said. “But it has been a struggle ever since.”
And the outlook for such jobs remains bleak, according to the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, which predicts that the oil industry will contract by 20 percent in the next decade and by 95 percent from 2031 to 2050.
With her career derailed, Malucci had to find an alternate way to make money.
She began making beaded bracelets and selling them on Emgems Creations, which she launched on online marketplace Etsy last March.
Malucci has sold $10,000 worth of jewelry in the past eight months, significantly less than her $80,000 annual salary at Stingray. But, she said, the work is good for her morale.
“It was pretty hard for a while not being able to find a job. I was really down,” Malucci said. “So I became passionate about making bracelets for people. It has been good for me because it gives me purpose. It is something to wake up and do.”
Daniel Meehan, 31, also had to get creative with his job path after he was laid off in May. The former Marathon Oil geologist started Alchemist Fire BBQ, a barbecue seasoning company, out of his Houston-area home in late November. Meehan made the switch after his monthslong job search came up empty.
“I was looking for jobs in energy, but there wasn’t a lot,” Meehan said. “I even tried applying for sales jobs in the industry.”
Meehan began creating recipes for his seasoning blends for fun after his father bought him a backyard grill for Christmas in 2015.
“I went and bought a bunch of seasonings. Some were too sweet or not sweet enough,” Meehan said. “By 2019, I had replaced them all with my own blend.”
His hobby has now become a business venture. Alchemist Fire BBQ offers two proprietary mixes, with more on the way.
Meehan, who made $121,000 a year at Marathon, said he sells about $1,500 of product per month, netting half that amount.
Meanwhile, he continues to apply for energy jobs, though he isn’t confident he’ll land one.
“Oil and gas may come back,” Meehan said, “but green energy seems more long term.”
Meehan’s expectations could prove to be correct. President Joe Biden, aiming to slow the effects of climate change, has pledged to focus on renewable energy to put the U.S. on a path to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
The president’s plans “would create more jobs in clean energy than the jobs that might be sacrificed,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said during her Senate confirmation hearing in January.
Experts and workers, however, aren’t so confident.
Bad timing
The transition to renewables was bad news for geologist Scott Wessels, who believes the oil and gas business no longer holds a place for him.
“I don’t think jobs for a geologist are going to come back,” said Wessels, who was laid off from PetroEdge Resources. “It has been nearly a year since I was let go. I have seen less than a dozen jobs posted, and there are hundreds of applicants for each.”
Losing his job could not have come at a worse time for the 36year-old Houston resident.
Wessels and his wife had welcomed a baby just six months before. Not only was he left looking for ways to provide for his family, but he had to turn down an opportunity to enroll in the Master of Business Administration program at Rice University.
“I was accepted a few weeks after I was laid off. I couldn’t afford to go,” Wessels said.
Instead, he started a power washing company, Tidy Wash, in August.
“It was something I could learn quickly and start in a short amount of time on a low budget,” said Wessels, adding that he isn’t sure how long he’ll stick with it.
Without saying specifically how much he’s making, Wessels said the business pays about a third of what he earned as a geologist.
“I am doing this to fill the gap in our budget until my wife and I can figure out what we are going to do in the next phase of our lives,” Wessels said.