These drill-loving, lobbyist-friendly politicians love to promise jobs when they're pushing projects like the Keystone XL pipeline, but it never quite turns out like that. From Think Progress:
However, studies conducted independently of TransCanada find much smaller jobs numbers, far from “tens of thousands.” An oil contractor hired by the State Department reported it would create between 5,000 and 6,000 temporary jobs, while an independent study by Cornell University found it would create only 500 to 1,400 temporary jobs. Once the costs of the increased pollution and risk of oil spills is factored in, Cornell found, the jobs impact is likely to be negative.
The “118,000 spin-off jobs” number used by TransCanada received two Pinocchios from the Washington Post Fact Checker:
As opponents have documented, if the capital costs are lower than predicted, and if the multiplier is smaller, then the number of “spin-off jobs” can shrink dramatically. The same goes for the estimates of “permanent jobs,” which depend also on the price of oil.
….
Among the list of jobs that would be created: 51 dancers and choreographers, 138 dentists, 176 dental hygienists, 100 librarians, 510 bread bakers, 448 clergy, 154 stenographers, 865 hairdressers, 136 manicurists, 110 shampooers, 65 farmers, and (our favorite) 1,714 bartenders.
I have a friend who lives upstate where they're drilling into the Marcellus Shale, and she said the same thing - no local jobs, all the drillers are from out of state. The only local people making money, she said, are the bars, restaurants and hotels.
