"Drill, Dig, Baby, Drill, Dig"...Not what many people want to hear BUT it has helped save our economy. Doubt it? Look at these numbers...

I copied this chart from the teriffic website EMSI and added some numbers based off of their data.

The EMSI data show how many jobs there are in certain sectors of the energy and mineral extraction industry and how many ADDITIONAL jobs down the supply chain are needed to support those jobs. From this, they calculate a "jobs multiplier" (This discussion is excellent--go read it!!!).

Example: In "Support Activities for Metal Mining" there were a total of 5,103 jobs in that specific category in 2013.  EMSI estimates that for each of those jobs 7.09 additional jobs were created as supply chain support jobs. So, that category produced a total of 36,180 jobs---the 5,103 direct ones and 31,077 indirect ones created to support those 5,103.  Hope that makes sense.

I was curious as to how many DIRECT jobs were created since 2010 (the end of the recession) and the number of supply chain support jobs created as a result.  They did not have those numbers broken out, so I had to calculate them.

Those numbers are in columns "1" and "2" in bold.

Column 1 has the number of NEW jobs created in each category since 2010.

Column 2 has the number of NEW supply chain support jobs created in each category since 2010, using the same multipliers.

Add them all up.  Since 2010 the number of new direct jobs created is 189,451 and the number of supply chain support jobs is 404,157.

Total jobs created in these categories in the last 3 years and 5 months was 593,608.

Using employment numbers from the BLS archives (Jan 2010 to May 2013) the economy has added 3,969,000 new jobs since January 2010.

So, jobs in the Energy and Mineral Extraction sector have accounted for a MINIMUM of 15% (593,608/3,969,000 X 100) of ALL new jobs since 2010.

Read that percentage again. That is significant.

"Drill, Dig, Baby, Drill, Dig".  I am pretty sure this has helped save our economy...

Nice article illustrating Opportunity Costs, the PPF and Supply and Demand in Agricultural Markets...

Farmers’ corn push to hit soyabeans (The Financial Times)

Food commodity prices rose after US farmers signalled plans to sow the most corn in 75 years, taking away land from soyabeans, which are facing a fall in supplies due to droughts in South America.
A US government survey of 84,500 farm operators indicated they would plant 95.9m acres (38.4m hectares) with corn this spring, 4 per cent more than last year, the most since 1937 and above expectations. Plantings of soyabeans, often rotated with corn, would fall 1 per cent from last year to 73.9m acres (29.6m hectares), with declines in such fertile states as Iowa, Missouri and Nebraska.

The US is the world’s leading exporter of corn and vies with Brazil in soyabean exports, so decisions made there are vital to global food markets. A growing world population and rising incomes in emerging economies have driven greater appetites for the crops, used in products from pig feed to vegetable oil.

Oilseed traders are increasingly on edge after a severe drought hurt the current soyabean crop in South America. The US Department of Agriculture’s annual Prospective Plantings report sent related canola and rapeseed futures markets higher in Canada and Europe. China buys three of every five bushels of the world’s soyabean imports.

“This is the annus horribilis for South American grain production. La Niña hit all the wrong places. For soyabeans, it makes the US all the more important,” said Nick Higgins, commodity analyst at Rabobank, the Dutch bank that is one of the biggest lenders to the agribusiness industry.

The US also said stocks of domestic corn left over from last year’s harvest totalled 6bn bushels on March 1, down 8 per cent from a year ago. The number was slightly lower than anticipated and suggested very low inventories before this year’s harvest begins.

CBOT May corn, which reflects the old crop, rose 6.6 per cent to $6.44 a bushel in Chicago. December corn gained just 3.1 per cent.

CBOT May soyabeans added 3.5 per cent to reach $14.03 a bushel, while soyabeans for November delivery rose 4.1 per cent. ICE May canola rose 3.2 per cent to C$622.50 a tonne in Winnipeg, touching the highest price since the global food crisis of 2007-08.

Corn peaked at a record of almost $8 a bushel last June as growers sought to meet demand from livestock producers and the US ethanol industry. If farmers follow through with planting intentions and yields are good, this year’s crop could break records, helping ease concerns about food prices.
The USDA also said that farmers intended to plant 13.2m acres of cotton, 11 per cent below last year.
Wheat acres are growing 3 per cent from a year ago to 55.9m acres.

Electric Vehicles are NOT the answer to energy independence...Why does this have to be so hard???

Resources are not unlimited---this forms the foundation for the definition of economics.  Essential natural resources ("Rare Earth Minerals") used in the manufacture of electric cars come primarily from mines in China. The more electric vehicles we produce the more dependent we become on China for a critical element.  We move to these vehicles to escape dependency from one commodity (oil) and find ourselves captive to another...How come things cannot be easy...

The Rare-Earth Crisis

"...One argument I’ve heard is “national security,” the idea being that electric vehicles would make the United States less dependent on imported oil. Be careful what you wish for, however, because if electric cars become a mainstay, we may be trading one dependence for another that is even more troubling. Ninety-five percent of the world’s output of rare-earth metals today comes from one country: China. By some estimates, demand will outstrip supply within five years. At least with oil we know there are fifty years of oil reserves readily available. Moreover, oil is produced all over the world, limiting the monopoly power of any one country...." Source: Freakonomics