Oil prices dropped, and jobs had to go. The first ones were at the oil service companies like Halliburton and Schlumberger. “They’ve quickly moved to reduce their amount of operations in the field, and the first phone call they make is to that service company,” says Jeff Bush, president of CSI Recruiting, which places workers in oil and gas jobs.

Next come layoffs at the major oil companies. And now, Bush says, job cuts are trickling down to the independents—companies that just focus on oil and natural gas extraction.

“It just follows the course of who feels the pain the first,” he says.

In Texas, just in the last three weeks, more than 500 workers—from drillers to crane operators— have lost jobs, according to the Texas Workforce Commission. And since November, the unemployment claims keep coming, Lisa Givens, spokeswoman for the commission says.

“We have just over 50,000 claims filed for that time period,” Givens says.”And then last year for this same time period we saw just over 23,000 claims filed.”