Energy services dipped 487 jobs to 627,538 in October as US hiring beat forecasts

Energy services employment ended October at 627,538 jobs. That is 487 fewer than in September, according to the Energy Workforce & Technology Council's October 2026 jobs report, released November 9 and built on preliminary Bureau of Labor Statistics data plus the council's own analysis. The dip comes to less than a tenth of one percent of the sector's workforce. Statistically, it's a shrug.

The rest of the economy had a very different month. US employers added 165,000 jobs in October, unemployment slipped to 4.1% from 4.2%, and the council noted that August and September gains were revised up by a combined 84,000. Forecasters had expected far less: KTRK reported a consensus of about 60,000, and The Daily Upside put it at 59,000. Energy services stood still while the wider labor market ran well ahead of forecasts.

October wasn't a one-off, either. John Diamond, director of the Center for Tax and Budget Policy at Rice University's Baker Institute, told KTRK that monthly gains have averaged 137,000 over the last three months, "a really strong number." Deloitte Insights ranked October as the third-strongest month of job growth this year. Against that pace, a sector sitting near zero isn't catching the national tailwind.

For the operations leader at a service company, or the operator lining up crews for 2027 work, the useful question is what a flat line means. It reads as a sector keeping the people it has rather than hiring or shedding them. Holding people steady has its own cost, and that cost is moving.

Twelve states, most of the workforce

The council's state table shows how concentrated this workforce is. Texas alone accounts for 305,799 jobs, well ahead of Louisiana at 52,399 and Oklahoma at 47,756. That spread suggests the sector's employment picture depends heavily on a small number of producing states.

By our arithmetic, the twelve states in the table add up to about 564,400 jobs, roughly 90% of the national total, and Texas by itself is just under half. Below the top three, the list runs from Colorado at 25,478 down through New Mexico, California and Pennsylvania, each between about 22,700 and 23,500, to Ohio at 10,417 and West Virginia at 9,601.

That concentration changes how the national number should be read. A 487-job swing spread across 627,538 workers says almost nothing about any one basin. For a company running crews in North Dakota, Wyoming or Alaska, where state counts run from about 9,700 to 19,500, a few dozen moves in one direction would matter far more locally than the national total suggests. The state rows are the better planning baseline, and comparing them month to month is a cheap way to spot a regional shift before it reaches the national figure.

One caution before treating those rows as hard numbers. The state breakdown comes from the same release as the national total, and the council described the underlying data as preliminary, according to Maritime Gazette's summary of the report, so the figures could be revised in later releases. The council also urged stakeholders to consider monthly volatility when reading short-term shifts. The practical reading: a state's direction across several releases tells you more than any single month's row.

Holding crews in a market with little churn

Energy Workforce President Molly Determan cast the flat count as deliberate. In the council's release, she said companies are focused on keeping the skilled workforce their customers depend on while market conditions stay uncertain, balancing near-term activity against the people and capabilities they'll need for future growth. More hiring, in her account, depends on sustained investment.

The national backdrop supports that reading. Goldman Sachs Chief Economist Jan Hatzius, speaking on CNBC the day the national report came out, put the underlying trend in job growth probably back above 100,000 a month. He also described a labor market sitting at about full employment, with hiring still subdued and unemployment holding in a 4.1% to 4.2% range he expects to stay roughly stable. "It is still a more stagnant environment, but at a very solid level," he said.

In that kind of market, available talent is scarce and new hiring moves slowly. That suggests a skilled field employee who leaves would be slow to replace, which makes keeping the current bench a sensible default.

Deloitte's read of the household survey adds a detail worth a recruiter's attention. In October, unemployment fell for teenagers and for workers with a high school diploma and no college degree, and rose for college graduates. If a service company fills field roles from that non-degree pool, a falling jobless rate there would mean fewer available candidates, which strengthens the case for holding the people already trained.

There is a less flattering reading, and the council's own release points to it. It cites continuing uncertainty over commodity prices, customer spending and activity levels. A flat count fits a sector protecting its bench, and it also fits a sector where work simply isn't growing fast enough to justify new hires. One preliminary month can't tell those two stories apart, and the 84,000-job upward revision to national August and September figures shows how much early numbers can move.

What a steady crew costs in 2026

Keeping headcount flat does not keep the labor budget flat. Deloitte Insights, in Ira Kalish's weekly update, walked through the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics employment cost index for private-sector workers. Wages and salaries rose 3.1% year over year in the third quarter of 2026, the smallest gain since early 2021. Benefit costs rose 3.9%, the largest increase since the second quarter of 2023 and the fourth straight quarter of faster growth.

Total compensation costs rose 3.4%, also the biggest gain since the second quarter of 2023. In Kalish's reading, the cost to employ workers is accelerating even while the wages those workers earn rise at a modest pace.

Health care drives that gap. A flat headcount still comes with a rising bill: across US private employers, health benefit costs climbed 6.4% year over year in the third quarter. That's up from 6% the quarter before. The figures cover all private industry, not energy services specifically, but they describe the cost environment every employer holding a stable workforce is working in.

The pressure sits upstream of the benefit plan, too. Deloitte pointed to the consumer price index, which showed hospital services costs up 5.6% year over year in September. That suggests the benefits climb reflects what medical care itself costs, which a plan redesign at one company would have limited power to offset.

There's a retention angle too. Average hourly earnings rose 3.1% in October, down from 3.2% in September and the slowest pace since May 2021, while consumer prices were up 3.7% in September, according to the same Deloitte analysis. Pay isn't keeping up with prices for the typical private-sector worker. For a service company trying to hold onto skilled people, benefits are where spending is growing, and pay is where workers are feeling squeezed.

Where October's 165,000 jobs went

National growth came from outside the energy patch. Deloitte found about 76% of October's gain came from two sectors: professional and business services, up 70,000, and healthcare and social assistance, up 55,100. Transportation and warehousing added 24,800. Manufacturing added 19,000, including 6,700 in computer and electronic products, and durable goods manufacturing is up 131,000 so far this year. Deloitte linked part of that factory growth to data center construction.

Not every sector joined in. Leisure and hospitality lost 13,000 jobs in October, so energy services wasn't the only industry sitting out a strong month.

For service companies that recruit field technicians from the same regional trades pool as manufacturers, that manufacturing line is worth tracking alongside their own attrition data. Hatzius expects the volume of AI investment to flatten out once 2028 arrives, the way historical investment booms end once the needed capital stock is built. That suggests factory hiring tied to data centers may be a strong competitor for trades workers now without being a permanent one.

Hatzius also put the effect of AI on hiring at roughly 10,000 to 15,000 fewer jobs a month, mostly in technology so far. He sees early signs of it broadening into service industries and expects it to become somewhat more of a headwind for employment growth by 2028. Nothing in the council's report ties that effect to energy services.

Rates, oil and the investment test

The strong report also shifted the financing backdrop. Futures markets' implied probability of a Federal Reserve rate hike in December rose from 66.9% to 81.1% after the release, per Deloitte, which read the jump as expectations of a stronger and potentially more inflationary economy. Hatzius had already flagged financial conditions that have tightened by about 50 basis points on Goldman's index. For an industry whose hiring, in Determan's account, waits on sustained investment, tighter money is part of that equation.

Oil sits in the middle of the calculation. Hatzius listed energy prices and the war with Iran, with its implications for real income growth, among the downside risks to his outlook. Deloitte attributed a sharp fall in the 10-year breakeven inflation rate partly to declining oil prices. Matthew Martin, senior US economist at Oxford Economics, wrote in a note quoted by The Daily Upside that "continued falls in tech stocks and oil prices could eliminate the prospect of an additional hike in early 2027."

That puts energy services in an awkward spot. The falling oil prices that could ease rate pressure belong to the same commodity-price uncertainty the council lists as weighing on customer spending. Relief on financing and pressure on activity could arrive together, which is one more reason companies would hesitate to add crews ahead of firm work.

Hatzius's baseline for next year is GDP growth of 2% to 2.5%, with unemployment roughly stable. That is a step down from now: he described growth above 3% in the second and third quarters, and The Daily Upside put third-quarter growth at 3.4%. In that environment, Determan's point about investment is what decides the sector's next move. The council's November count, and any revision to October, will show which reading holds: steady state counts in Texas, Louisiana and Oklahoma would support the view that companies are keeping their crews on purpose, and a broad slide would mean activity has caught up with headcount.