Big drop in American oil jobs

US employers added just 126,000 jobs in March, which was much less than the 245,000 expected by economists.

While most industries continued to add jobs, one mining industry, which includes everyone in the oil industry, cut jobs.

"Employment in mining declined by 11,000 in March," the Bureau of Labor Statistics noted. "The industry has lost 30,000 jobs thus far in 2015 after adding 41,000 jobs in 2014."

Since oil prices crashed late 2014 and have stayed low ever since, US energy companies have been shutting down rigs in an effort to bring supply in line with demand. But that obviously translates to lost jobs.

As you can see in the chart below from Goldman Sachs' Alec Phillips, the relationhip between the US oil rig count is closely correlated to the number of oil and gas industry payrolls.

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