Wait for an upturn, or pick up stakes and look for work elsewhere? That’s the dilemma facing oil workers around Carlsbad in New Mexico, where a brutal drop in petroleum prices has hit the local economy hard.
Many oil workers in the arid southwestern state have already left the campgrounds where they had parked their RVs, after being drawn here by exceptionally high salaries.
In this dusty town in the Permian Basin — site of the planet’s largest oil and natural gas deposits, astride the Texas-New Mexico border — a worker can earn $100,000 or even $150,000 a year, twice or more than the average private sector wage there.
