In a post last month, the Employment Spectator tracked an announcement made by Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar, in which the Obama administration indefinitely banned offshore drilling.   In response to the moratorium on off shore permits originally set to expire by the end of May, a spokesperson for the International Association of Drilling Contractors warned that anywhere from 7,500 to 10,000 drill rig jobs may be lost by June’s end.   In addition, hundreds of smaller businesses serving and reliant upon the industry would suffer from drying up revenues.

At the time, the Cassandra like predictions seemed high.  Based on a Huffington Post report released today, those initial figures smack of understatement.  The Louisiana Oil and Gas Association is now estimating that as many as 75,000 jobs are at stake in the Gulf region and those figures, like the original ones, do not take into consideration all the jobs that are reliant on or support the drilling industry.  The Gulf economy is rapidly circling the drain and, like the hole that started this whole mess, the sink seems unpluggable.