We would consider the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry to be the definitive counter of jobs and employment in Pennsylvania.
If that's not the case, we're all in trouble because that's the basis for thousands of unemployment reports over the years that everyone relies on to make important decisions.
Well, the department recently reported there were 72,000 new hires in the Marcellus Shale drilling industry and related industries between the fourth quarter of 2009 and the first quarter of 2011.
The Keystone Research Center, a Harrisburg think tank affiliated with organized labor, managed to pour cold water all over that statistic, stating the real number is 9,300.
Our hunch is that the center doesn't want an industry that employs a large number of workers not affiliated with organized labor to look like a major economic factor.
But anyone who has lived and worked in Pennsylvania for any amount of time can see the economic impact of the industry. The facts are that the industry is responsible for unemployment rates in some counties that are well below the national average and have dropped by percentage points in the past year.
In the Northern Tier, the employment growth has been 1,500 percent in the past two years and there is only one reason for that. The natural gas drilling industry.
Just the payroll tax and other tax revenue to the state in the past year from the industry more than $1 billion indicates how much the center is underplaying the employment.
The average wage in the core gas industries is $73,150 and the average wage in the ancillary industries that serve the gas drilling is $61,871, both numbers well above typical industrial pay rates.
The drillers have spent $411 million in the past three years rebuilding local and Pennsylvania roads. That alone requires substantial employment.
If the center wants to argue that environmental risks come with this growth and that it must be regulated closely, we're on board with them.
If the center wants to be upset that illegal aliens affiliated with a gas-related industry were arrested recently, we share their angst.
But trying to make the gas drilling an insignificant economic factor in Pennsylvania by skewing the jobs impact makes this organization look like just another agenda-driven interest group.
