Economic Effects of Fracking on Wage and Employment: Story of Texas

• Main Author: Hector, Gage
• Format: Others
• Published: OpenSIUC 2019
• Online Access: https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/theses/2615; https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3630&context=theses

The study of this paper is to see the economic effects of fracking in Texas. We focus specifically on wage and employment change. We use quarterly data from the Bureau of Labor and Statistics at the county level, income data from the Internal Revenue Service, and quarterly level county drilling data from Enverus, from the years 2003-2019 quarter one. We focus on the Natural Resource & Mining sector and the Total, All Industries sector. We use a fixed effects linear model to see the changes of one-year employment and one-year weekly wage change. We find that one-year change in employment is positive and significant to the amount of oil drilled within the first sixty-months. One-year change in weekly wage was less significant due to the notion that prices are sticky.