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As America has become energy self-sufficient, the participation in the global energy market is causing problems for tens of thousands of workers in the oil and gas development fields.
The crash in global oil prices happened late last year, with oil prices plunging from nearly $110 to about $45 for a barrel for West Texas crude.
The collapse in oil prices came as a surprise to the nation's oil workers. While there had been booms and busts before, this was supposed to a sustainable renaissance in American energy.
Further threatening is the future of high-paying jobs with the natural gas boom, with natural gas prices remaining at the bottom.
And though oil has bounced back a bit â to about $60 a barrel â the pressure on American oil drillers isn't subsiding.
Saudi Arabia and other members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries just announced that they would continue to pump 30 million barrels of oil a day, the latest recent instance of the group breaking with a long-running strategy of reducing supply when prices fall.
On the same day, new U.S. jobs data indicated that another 17,000 jobs in and around the oil and gas industries disappeared in May.
The industry had offered the rare prospect of good-paying jobs to American men with no education beyond high school â men who spent two decades seeing economic opportunities battered by the twin forces of globalization and factory automation.
"They're going to have to take lower-paying jobs," said Lynn Gray, director of economic research and analysis for the Oklahoma Economics Security Commission.
"There's going to be very few opportunities paying anywhere near what they're making. That's beginning to dawn on them." | 
