[jofer]

I think people often don't realize the scale at which energy companies use contractors/etc. The "boots on the ground" folks are almost entirely contractors or hired through another company. Plenty of companies exist purely to provide employees to one oil company in one field.

Exxon/Chevron/Total/BP/etc each have around 50-100k employees (I may be a bit off there, but it's in the ballpark). The workforce required for each of their operations globally is in the low millions.

At the end of the day, a major oil company is actually a construction company. Their specialty is managing complex projects with lots of subcontractors. As a result, they have a surprisingly low employee count.

[AngryData]

Telecomms do this for laying new wires/fiber too. They subcontract most all of the lashing, digging, and boring and the pulling of actual fiber lines, leaving the ends loose, and only then use their own employees to go out and actually splice them into the previous lines or into an active network. The connections at the end are quick and easy with little liability risks, unlike climbing electric or telephone poles, trimming trees near aerial cables, going into underground utility tunnels, and digging trenches through power and gas and water and other cables. They also don't have to buy and maintain nearly as many boom trucks and excavating machines like horizontal boring machines or mini excavators.

[liotier]

> then use their own employees to go out and actually splice them into the previous lines or into an active network.

Hahahaha - no. We use contractors for that too - no one who is outside our offices is an employee. GIS jockeys are contractors too. My developers also and most of the call centers. Essentially the only in-house functions are architecture, project management - everything else is contracted out.

[thunfischbrot]

And even a good part of those in the offices are contractors. Think Accenture, Capgemini for IT and project management as well as many others, including receptionists, secretaries, facility management, cleaners.

[bluGill]

Note too that they don't have to own those machines when they aren't pulling new lines. The same boring machine that pulls a new cable today can pull a waterline for someone else tomorrow, and a gas line next week. By out sourcing there is one machine and crew busy all the time vs 3 machines/crews used only a third of the time.

[TheSpiceIsLife]

And at the other end of the business they outsource billing and technical support, and franchise their stores. And seem to be forever laying off thousands of workers.

[fauigerzigerk]

True, but many of those contractors will themselves be classified as energy companies according to the S&P (GICS) sector classification.

For instance, energy services companies such as Schlumberger or Halliburton belong to the energy sector as well.

But it's true that there will be a ton of low value work that gets outsourced to services companies that are mostly classified as industrials (construction, environmental services, transportation, etc).

[burger_moon]

These contracting companies the OP is referring to aren't like Schlumberger. They are just temp agencies basically. The one I used to work for in the power industry also does contracting jobs in oil and gas, tech, mining, chemical. They don't own equipment or anything like Haliburton, they just provide bodies. Maybe they get classified as employing people in those industries but it seems unlikely.

[taneq]

Sounds a lot like mining, although you could go a step further and say that (depending on where in the mining boom/bust cycle we are) mining companies are actually finance companies. They find a location (by paying geological survey companies, or by just buying an established claim from someone else), they pay other companies to design and build a mine site, then they pay yet other companies to staff and operate the site. Sometimes the company has very little direct involvement in actually digging ore out of the ground and processing it.

[anthony_barker]

For smallcap you can just consider them an option contract that is heavily marketed.

Most of the materials from the mine are presold.

[_bxg1]

As one data point, I had no idea