Strike oil. For a living.

Stop the presses! Apparently there is a group of Generation Yers out there who aren't freaking out about the possibility of not being able to find work, or facing the prospect of putting off their "real" career until their mid-30s, when the Baby Boomers have retired. That's right, folks, there is a distinct subset of the 22-30 crowd that not only have jobs but claim they are "rewarding and the long-term prospects are good."

Who are these chosen few? How did they get so lucky? Two words: oil industry. According to the Houston Business Journal, a Deloitte report found that "there is an abundance of long-term opportunity in the business, largely because of a huge generation gap between young and old." As a result, an industry specialist quoted in piece thinks that “this younger generation is going to be called upon to handle a lot more responsibility at a younger age.”

It's not all good news, though: emphasizing the crazy Catch-22 logic at play in all industries at the moment, the piece also goes on to point out that, among industry managers, "the No. 1 topic is cutbacks." That means many Gen Yers are getting pink slips as "Companies are likely to keep more senior people on when job cuts become a necessity."

Where those same companies will be five and ten years down the line when their aging workforce is retiring and there's no one to fill their positions, however, remains to be seen.

A quick summary, then: the oil and gas industry have great long-term prospects. The short-term prospects, however, are about the same as they are everywhere else: almost nonexistent. Make of that what you will, but keep an eye on positions in the industry as the economy starts to recover.

--Posted by Phil Stott, Vault.com