Since crude prices began tumbling last year, energy companies have announced plans to lay off more than 100,000 workers around the world, the Wall Street Journal reported today. At least 91,000 layoffs have already materialized, with the majority coming in oil-field-services and drilling companies, according to research by Graves & Co., a Houston consulting firm. Now the cutbacks are slowly showing up in federal employment data. Direct employment in oil and gas extraction, which had grown by more than 50,000 jobs since 2007, has fallen by about 3,000 jobs since it peaked in October at 201,500, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics; 12,000 jobs have disappeared from the larger category of energy support since it reached 337,600 jobs in September.
