The US witnessed the most drastic decline of oil and gas jobs, with the North Sea offshore market also hit hard, but southeast Asia has so far escaped substantial layoffs given shipyards in Korea, China and Singapore are still busy, however when the lag of awarded work ends they are also expected to be impacted.

The Middle East has continued on a sustainable path, though job creation has slowed.

Swift CEO Tobias Read said that while the job cuts are affecting direct employees, contractors are generally the first to be laid off and aren’t accounted for in typical layoff statistics.

The report defined the contractor space as a “huge silent community” of over 100,000 professional workers.

The report also found that, in international markets controlled by state-owned oil companies, there has been a slowdown of new projects, and more layoffs can be expected.

Most cuts made so far have been made in the upstream businesses, with many cuts “done sympathetically through accelerated early retirement programs.”

Hiring has slowed or frozen in more than half of companies, and similar numbers suggest additional job cuts within the next six months are likely.

Swift said its assumptions were probably conservative and the likelihood was that total job losses would probably greatly exceed its forecasts.