Midland, Texas-Million Dollar Jobs

The economy in the United States sounds horrible, yet in 2011 in Midland, Texas we are not seeing this effect as far as securing a job. Are we blind? No, just oil rich with thousands of barrels being pumped from the ground day and night from all the drilling rigs in Midland County. Yes, we have had oil booms and bust in this little community of 130,000 residents. The difference in this oil and gas rush or boom in 2011 is that the prices will stay high for a few years and not a few months. This causes local problems when we have a boom like we have now. One, is the housing, there is nowhere to live to enjoy being employed by a company. The second problem when there is jobs in a centralized area where the weather is pretty much the same all year long providing an ultimate place to live for families. Midland is not walking on egg cartons during this oil boom, we are walking with our heads in the clouds, and there is no looking down. The jobs are coming to the folks that are here and established also for those from all over the country.

I went to my local Walgreen’s store in Midland, Texas and there was a new lady at the cashier station, and I mentioned I never have seen her. She told me she had just moved from San Diego, Ca. to gain employment in this little town in the dessert. I asked how bad it was, she said McDonald’s would not even take applications in San Diego, that there was no work to be found there. In that light, I am a resident in this town and I get emails from companies hiring here from employment companies as far off as Houston, Texas and Oklahoma City, Ok. And there is no end in sight. The minimum wage is 7.50 an hour in this town, there is not a one place paying this; there is however ten to thirty dollar an hour jobs here and yes McDonalds is hiring at a rate higher than minimum wage.

What is happening in Midland, Texas is simple; the oil prices are in the eighty to ninety dollar per barrel mark on the stock exchange and have been for about a year or more. This means people buy into drilling equipment and pay people to drill for oil in this oil rich barren land for an extreme profit. The oil companies that are established here have the threshold and first dibs on some of the best drilling spots in the county. This is a large desolate area out here, and the sky’s the limit. The entry level oil worker, starts at about fifteen dollars an hour, and that is with no experience and plenty of hours to add to the paycheck. Is it dangerous work, yes very dangerous, because where you have money, you have an abundance of illegal drugs and abuse of alcohol. You mix these in with working on a drilling rig, there will be trouble.

There are rules and laws for hiring persons to work on drilling rigs, but they were made to be broken. The drilling rig never shuts down; it is up twenty four hours a day Monday through Sunday with rest periods for changing shifts. The dirt blows out on the plains out here and with droplets of rain at times can make for a dirty job to entail and frustrations set in with the mental anguish.

When oil flows in Midland, Texas the other business in town thrive as well, and it is interesting to watch this unfold. It is a domino effect, I have seen this before, as I said earlier in this article, we have had booms before but this one will last longer than any of them. The hotels are booked up; the bad neighborhoods are packed with a diverse type of people. The houses that are for sale are outrageously overpriced. Therefor if you were not settled in about six months ago, you’re in for a true find for a place to live. We have people sleeping in their cars, because of the high rates and sleeping in tents on the outside of town in our dumpy little travel camps that have not been used for years.

I have in the last five days been offered six different entry level jobs that would usually take a master’s degree in two of the jobs in order to qualify. The jobs are finding the people by personal email, which is unusual and yet you get a choice of what you want to do. I am an electronics computer technician, and it is a new job paying in the mid-50s per year with no experience. I was contacted by a company out of Dallas and took an online test for electronics, in which I have some experience, and interviewed in three days, then hired. This is nice; I will have to admit, yet this time last year it was not like this. Now with the population growing and building a mass of people coming to this little town in Western Texas, from all over the country has to make one wonder about the sanity of the oil and gas business. However you feel, oil and gas production is here to stay and with rising cost and inflation not going down any time soon, this is a safe place to live and work in a city with less than a half a million occupants.

It is a shame that the rest of the country is hurting, I am assuming places like Houston, Texas and other oil rich cities are doing very well in their own right. It makes one wonder to conclude could this boom make Midland, Texas a large city now with the expansion happening so fast and over-flowing of people coming here for work. The crime is up, yet we have a great local law enforcement community, the shootings are up and the drug busts are very high on the police blotter. This is not unusual for a place that is exceeding like my town is. The good part is it seems to be controlled by the officers and town citizens. The place to be for 2011 and beyond for high paying jobs and for plenty of work is here in Midland, Texas and will be for a while. Make sure you bring a travel trailer or tent though before you head out on the highway here. Remember you are in the west now also, and we don’t put up with rude people very well. There are still those that wear cowboy hats and strap on the kicker boots, with no horses to hook up to the local store, but we have Maserati’s and Ferraris that are curb bound and just think of this place as a temporary leap of faith. This could all fall apart in a few years also. That is the oil business as a whole. Work is in Midland, Texas for the next few months or years, come and gets you some.

CFH 11.09.2011

Updated04/19/2013