The number of oil rigs in production have tumbled 14 straight weeks, the biggest and longest drop since the mid-80's.

Drillers idled 56 oil rigs (excluding gas rigs), dropping the total to 866, Baker Hughes reported on Friday, March 13. The oil rig count is down 46 percent since October, an unprecedented retreat.

While that translates directly into job losses in the oil patches, that isn't the real problem.
The real problem is that the shutting down of production isn't happening fast enough. While shale oil production growth has nearly stalled, it is still growing marginally due to past projects coming online.

The shale production bust is coming too late, as the nation faces the real potential of running out of storage space.

“Stocks may soon test storage capacity limits,” said the Paris-based adviser to 29 nations in its monthly market report. “That would inevitably lead to renewed price weakness, which in turn could trigger the supply cuts that have so far remained elusive.”

U.S. oil production is at its highest levels since 1972, even as oil prices have dropped to $45.

I’m a vampire, baby,
suckin’ blood
from the earth.
Well, I’m a vampire, babe,
sell you twenty barrels worth.
-Neil Young (Vampire Blues)

In 2012, IHS estimated that shale oil and gas production supported 1.7 million jobs directly and indirectly. They estimated at the time that by 2035 it would be 3.5 million jobs.
In 2013 Citicorp released a report calling North America the New Middle East.

Then the price collapsed.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas says the shale bust will cost 140,000 jobs.
The bust also threatens mortgage-backed securities from properties in the oil patch regions.

That's not the only bonds in trouble.
Oil producers being downgraded has swelled the size of the energy junk bond market .

The energy sector’s high-yield bonds – so-called “junk bonds” considered at risk of default – have climbed to $247 billion in the last two months, the largest share of any industry with 17.5 percent of high-yield bond market.
That percentage is comparable to the telecommunication sector’s share of the market in June 2002, around the time of WorldCom’s bankruptcy and a widespread industry crisis, according to Fitch.

Frackers are selling shares to pay for debt, but that is obviously no sustainable.

The rapid influx of highly-paid workers in "man-camps", with limited spending opportunities, led to a a crime wave in North Dakota, "including murders, aggravated assaults, rapes, human trafficking and robberies -- fueled by a huge market for illegal drugs, primarily heroin and methamphetamine.”
Now a collapse in oil prices has led to a different problem, a collapse in local tax revenue, which will hurt the local police department.