Oil and gas professionals and the managers who hire them have very different expectations about how a recovery in the hard-hit industry will play out, according to a new survey.
Workers and hiring managers remain far apart on key issues, from anticipated salary levels to the incentives that will coax engineers back to the oil patch, according to the first Global Energy Talent Index produced by recruitment firm Airswift and Energy Jobline, an online job board.
This gulf in expectations comes amid a widely anticipated labor shortage as a prolonged downturn has exacerbated problems with the industry's demographics, which skew older. The slump has pushed many of the industry's aging workers into retirement and soured engineering students on the oil and gas industry.
Some oil companies in the regions driving an early recovery in drilling activity report they are having a hard time finding labor.