“Frackers” of the Flower Moon: How Oil and Gas Production Has Affected Indigenous Labor Outcomes

The Indian Removal Act forced many native groups in the USA into what is now the state of Oklahoma. This new land was soon contested, in part, for the mineral wealth that lay beneath. In this research, we document how the recent surge in oil and gas production brought on by hydraulic fracturing has differentially affected native and non-native communities in this region and surrounding states. We make use of the sudden and unexpected increase in oil production to determine how “fracking” has changed labor market outcomes for native and non-native groups in the resource extracting sector as well as other spillover sectors. To study this, we make use of data from the Quarterly Workforce Indicators (QWI) and exploit the natural experiment setting that the advent of hydraulic fracturing provides. We find that earnings in the oil and gas extraction sector have increased for white workers by about 10%, but that earnings for Native workers are un-changed. Regarding spillovers into other sectors, we do find evidence that fracking increased employment and earnings for Native workers, but that these gains are not at the same scale as white workers.