Chevron, BP and other oil companies are moving more specialized white-collar positions and related work to lower-cost labor pools in countries such as India, while cutting thousands of jobs elsewhere, The Wall Street Journal reports.
The shift, alongside a string of mergers and cost-cutting, has thinned the companies’ ranks of skilled U.S. workers.
Chevron said in February that it would cut as many as roughly 8,000 jobs, or 20%, of its global workforce, by the end of next year as well as “changing how and where work is performed” by expanding the use of global centers, such as one in India. About half of Chevron’s nearly 40,000 employees are in the U.S.
The decision reflects a growing pool of skilled workers in India who are willing to do the same jobs for a fraction of the cost, along with advances in technology that enable remote working. Engineers there earn salaries around a third or a fourth their counterparts in the U.S.
The new positions aren’t only traditional back-office jobs that U.S. companies have offshored for years. Chevron intends to hire engineers, geologists and environmental scientists in India as part of a $1 billion investment to develop an engineering and innovation hub near Bellandur, a suburb of Bengaluru, a spokesman said.
Hiring for skilled posts in the U.S., meanwhile, has slowed to a pace typically associated with an oil downturn, recruiters say. The slowdown is creating gaps in the résumés of experienced oil workers, forcing some to take pay cuts in new roles and dissuading recent college graduates from joining the industry.
