Technology Is Changing Who Can Work in the Oilfield

Drive around West Texas long enough and you’ll notice something.

There are a lot more women driving trucks.

Water trucks. Vacuum trucks. Oil haulers. Sand trucks. Hotshots. Equipment trucks. Eighteen-wheelers running up and down 20, 349, 285 and lease roads all over the Basin.

I’ve always wondered:

Why are we seeing more women behind the wheel than ever before?

The easy answer would be that more women simply decided to become truck drivers.

That’s part of it.

But I think there’s a much bigger story happening.

Technology is changing the workforce from both directions.

It’s making jobs that were historically dominated by men less physically demanding, while at the same time making many of the traditional office jobs historically filled by women more automated and, in some cases, more scarce.

And the oilfield might be one of the best places in America to watch this transformation happen.

First, the Truck Changed

Go back several decades and driving a heavy truck was a much more physical occupation.

Manual transmissions.

Heavy clutches.

Older steering systems.

Less sophisticated braking.

Rougher suspensions.

Fewer cameras and sensors.

Less automation.

And plenty of equipment that required somebody to put some muscle behind it.

Modern commercial trucks are different machines.

Automatic and automated-manual transmissions have become common. Power steering is a given. Drivers have cameras, GPS, electronic logs, collision-warning systems, better braking technology and increasingly sophisticated onboard electronics.

The job certainly isn’t easy.

And anybody who has spent twelve hours bouncing down a West Texas lease road knows technology hasn’t magically made trucking comfortable.

But there’s an important difference:

Operating the equipment increasingly depends more on skill than brute strength.

You don’t necessarily have to be the biggest person on location anymore.

You need to know the equipment.

You need to understand safety.

You need to make good decisions.

And you need to operate the equipment correctly.

That opens the door to a much larger group of people.

Including women.

Women Are Still a Minority in Trucking — But They’re There

We shouldn’t exaggerate what’s happening.

Women haven’t “taken over” trucking.

Far from it.

The Women In Trucking Association’s 2024–25 WIT Index found that women represented about 7% of professional CDL drivers at the largest companies surveyed, about 10.5% at medium/large companies and 12.5% at companies with fewer than 500 employees.

So women are still clearly a minority behind the wheel.

But if you’ve worked in the oilfield for 20 or 30 years, you don’t need a spreadsheet to tell you the workforce looks different.

You can see it.

And there’s another side to this story that I think is just as important.

While the Truck Changed, the Office Changed Too

Think about a typical business office 30 or 40 years ago.

Secretaries.

Receptionists.

File clerks.

Accounting clerks.

Bookkeepers.

Data-entry personnel.

Administrative assistants.

Typists.

People processing invoices.

People answering phones.

People filing paperwork.

People entering information from one piece of paper into another system.

Historically, women filled a large share of these administrative and clerical positions.

Now walk into a modern office.

The computer ate a lot of those jobs.

And AI may eat some more.

We don’t need someone to type every letter.

We don’t need rooms full of filing cabinets.

Invoices can be automatically scanned and entered.

Phone systems route calls.

Customers enter information themselves.

Accounting software automatically reconciles transactions.

Electronic filing systems store millions of documents.

Managers schedule their own meetings.

Software generates reports that once took employees hours to compile.

And now artificial intelligence can summarize documents, analyze spreadsheets, prepare reports, draft correspondence and perform other routine knowledge work in seconds.

That’s not something coming 20 years from now.

It’s happening right now.

The Numbers Back That Up

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects overall employment in office and administrative-support occupations to decline between 2024 and 2034.

General office clerks alone are projected to decline by approximately 177,800 jobs, or about 7%.

Bookkeeping, accounting and auditing clerks are projected to decline by approximately 94,300 jobs, or about 6%.

Data-entry keyers are projected to decline by roughly 26%.

Word processors and typists?

BLS projects employment to decline by roughly 36%.

That’s a major workforce transition.

BLS specifically points to technologies such as automated document preparation, electronic filing, file-sharing software, self-service systems and other productivity improvements as reasons fewer employees will be required to perform some of this work.

That doesn’t mean office work is disappearing.

And it certainly doesn’t mean women are disappearing from offices.

It means the type of work available is changing.

Technology Is Pushing From Both Directions

And this is the part I find fascinating.

At almost the exact same time technology is eliminating physical barriers to traditionally male-dominated occupations, it’s eliminating some of the routine tasks associated with traditionally female-dominated office occupations.

Think about that.

Twenty-five or thirty years ago, somebody might have looked at a young man and a young woman entering the workforce and automatically assumed:

He’s probably going to work in the field.

She’s probably going to work in the office.

Those assumptions don’t work anymore.

The woman who might have taken an administrative position a generation ago can now get her CDL and haul crude.

She can become an automation technician.

She can operate heavy equipment.

She can become a lease operator.

She can run instrumentation.

She can troubleshoot electrical systems.

She can become an artificial-lift technician.

She can run fluid levels and dynamometers.

Meanwhile, the company might not need three administrative assistants anymore because technology allows one person to accomplish much of the same administrative workload.

The office got automated.

The equipment got easier to operate.

And somewhere in between, opportunity moved.

We’ve Watched the Same Thing Happen in the Oilfield

I’ve spent years in artificial lift, and we’ve watched this transformation happen right in front of us.

Oilfield work used to require a tremendous amount of manual labor.

And don’t get me wrong — it’s still plenty of it.

But technology continues removing physical work from the process.

Take rod-pump optimization.

There are problems thousands of feet underground that we can’t physically see.

Years ago, troubleshooting could involve considerably more trial and error.

Today we can walk onto a location with Echometer equipment (when it’s not crashing) and start building a picture of what’s happening downhole.

We can shoot a fluid level.

Run a dynamometer.

Analyze the surface and downhole pump cards.

Look at casing and tubing pressures.

Look at the well test.

Evaluate pump fillage.

Calculate pump intake pressure.

Review production history.

Compare current performance against previous surveys.

And start figuring out what’s happening thousands of feet below our boots.

None of that requires somebody to bench-press 300 pounds.

It requires knowledge.

That’s the transition.

The Oilfield Isn’t Necessarily Getting Easier. It’s Getting Smarter.

Automation doesn’t mean we don’t need people.

It changes which people we need and what we need them to know.

Maybe we need fewer people manually entering production numbers into spreadsheets.

But now we need somebody who understands the sensor collecting those numbers.

We need somebody who can troubleshoot the communication system transmitting them.

We need somebody who understands what the data means.

And most importantly, we need somebody experienced enough to recognize when the computer is wrong.

That’s why I don’t believe the future of the oilfield is simply:

“Machines are going to replace everybody.”

It’s more complicated than that.

Technology eliminates certain tasks.

Then it creates demand for different skills.

The person who survives that transition is the person willing to learn those skills.

That Creates Opportunity for Women

That’s why I think we’re going to continue seeing more women in traditionally male-dominated areas of the oilfield.

Not because companies suddenly decided women should drive trucks.

Not because women suddenly became physically stronger.

Because the nature of the job changed.

When physical strength becomes less important and technical competence becomes more important, your potential workforce gets bigger.

That’s good for our industry.

Especially because oil and gas has another challenge coming.

A tremendous amount of experience is walking toward retirement.

Some of the best lease operators, pumpers, mechanics, truck drivers, artificial-lift technicians and field supervisors in this industry have 30 or 40 years of knowledge stored between their ears.

Eventually they’re going home.

We need another generation behind them.

Men.

Women.

Young people.

People who grew up in the oilfield.

People who have never set foot on a location.

Our job is to train them.

The Future Worker Needs a Different Kind of Strength

There will always be physically demanding jobs.

There will always be situations where strength matters.

But increasingly, the most valuable person on location isn’t necessarily the strongest one.

It’s the person who can walk up to a problem and understand it.

What is this equipment telling me?

What doesn’t look right?

What changed?

Is this a mechanical problem, an electrical problem, an automation problem or a production problem?

What does the data say?

And the biggest question:

What do we do about it?

That’s where the value is moving.

So Why Are We Seeing More Women Driving Trucks?

There isn’t one reason.

Economics matter.

Recruiting matters.

Changing attitudes matter.

Workforce shortages matter.

And individual women are choosing these careers for their own individual reasons.

But technology is an important part of the bigger picture.

The same technological transformation that made an 80,000-pound commercial truck easier to operate is helping open occupations that were historically dominated by men to a much broader workforce.

At the same time, technology is reducing demand for some routine clerical and administrative work that historically employed large numbers of women.

Those two trends are meeting each other.

And we’re watching the American workforce reorganize itself.

So next time you’re driving down 20 and look over at that big truck beside you and there’s a woman behind the wheel, don’t think:

“When did women start driving trucks?”

Think about the bigger question:

What changed about the job that allowed more people to do it?

Because the exact same thing is happening throughout the oilfield.

Automation.

Artificial intelligence.

Better equipment.

Better sensors.

Better software.

Hydraulics.

Electronics.

Remote monitoring.

Data analytics.

All of it is changing who can do the work and what skills they’ll need to do it.

And I believe that’s ultimately a good thing.

Because the future of the oilfield shouldn’t be determined by whether you’re a man or a woman.

It should come down to something much simpler:

Can you learn the equipment?

Can you understand the data?

Can you work safely?

Can you solve problems?

Can you get results?

If the answer is yes, there’s a place for you out here.

The oilfield isn’t getting soft.

It’s getting smarter.

And the workforce is changing right along with it.

Optimization, well, done.

— FluidLevels.com

Sources & References

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — Office and Administrative Support Occupations
Occupational Outlook Handbook. BLS projects overall employment in office and administrative support occupations to decline from 2024 to 2034.
https://www.bls.gov/ooh/office-and-administrative-support/

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — General Office Clerks
BLS projects employment of general office clerks to decline 7% from 2024 to 2034, from approximately 2.646 million jobs to 2.468 million — a reduction of approximately 177,800 positions. BLS cites automated document preparation, automated phone systems, electronic filing and file-sharing software among the technologies reducing the need for clerical workers.
https://www.bls.gov/ooh/office-and-administrative-support/general-office-clerks.htm

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — Bookkeeping, Accounting and Auditing Clerks
Employment is projected to decline 6% between 2024 and 2034.
https://www.bls.gov/ooh/office-and-administrative-support/bookkeeping-accounting-and-auditing-clerks.htm

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — Occupational Projections and Worker Characteristics
BLS projects employment of data-entry keyers to decline approximately 25.9% from 2024 to 2034. Employment of word processors and typists is projected to decline approximately 36.1% over the same period.
https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/occupational-projections-and-characteristics.htm

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — Secretaries and Administrative Assistants
Overall employment of secretaries and administrative assistants is projected to show little or no change from 2024 to 2034. However, secretaries and administrative assistants excluding legal, medical and executive positions are projected to decline by approximately 30,800 jobs.
https://www.bls.gov/ooh/office-and-administrative-support/secretaries-and-administrative-assistants.htm

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — Information Clerks
Overall employment of information clerks is projected to decline 3% from 2024 to 2034. BLS notes that online ordering, self-service systems, electronic data collection and electronic document submission are limiting demand for some clerical occupations.
https://www.bls.gov/ooh/office-and-administrative-support/information-clerks.htm

Women In Trucking Association — 2024–25 WIT Index
The Women In Trucking Association reported that women represented approximately 12.5% of professional CDL drivers at surveyed companies with fewer than 500 employees, 10.5% at companies with 500–4,999 employees, and approximately 7% at companies with more than 5,000 employees.
https://www.womenintrucking.org/press-releases/women-in-trucking-association-releases-2024-25-wit-index-data

Author’s Note

This article discusses broad changes occurring in the American workforce. The increase in women working in trucking and other historically male-dominated occupations cannot be attributed to any single cause. Likewise, declining employment in some clerical occupations does not mean women are leaving office work as a whole.

Rather, the data illustrates a broader trend: technology, automation and changing equipment are altering the skills required for many occupations and changing where employment opportunities exist.