One item that I find potentially misleading is that, to my understanding, oil and gas companies outsource/subcontract a lot of the seasonal/irregular/less predictable work to third-parties. This means that these people aren't calculated in these numbers, but they generate a good chunk of the revenue. I could be wrong about that, but I used to work with Exxon and they talked about this - that the total employee base w…
I think people often don't realize the scale at which energy companies use contractors/etc. The "boots on the ground" folks are almost entirely contractors or hired through another company. Plenty of companies exist purely to provide employees to one oil company in one field. Exxon/Chevron/Total/BP/etc each have around 50-100k employees (I may be a bit off there, but it's in the ballpark). The workforce required for…
For instance, energy services companies such as Schlumberger or Halliburton belong to the energy sector as well.
But it's true that there will be a ton of low value work that gets outsourced to services companies that are mostly classified as industrials (construction, environmental services, transportation, etc).