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Things are tough all over. Unemployment is still high and it looks like many of the jobs lost since 2008 are never coming back. That's bad news for the long term displaced and new graduates, but there is one industry that can't hire enough people, the pay is great and you get to travel. However, the hours are long, the work is hard and the living conditions...well let's just say the view is fantastic!

How would you like the opportunity to work hard, earn promotions and be rewarded with pay raises for your hard work? An example of this is Mr. Jonathan Roberts who started working on an oil rig about 20 years ago making about $5 an hour. Today, the newly appointed operations manager of Norway's Standard Drilling makes about half a million dollars a year.

Mr. Roberts story is not unique in this field. Global demand for energy and a shortage of skilled labor have combined to make this one of the few industries where you can party like its 1999.

Managers and workers are scarce in this specialized industry, where the work is intense and the job involves living on a platform in remote seas for weeks. For new players in Asia, where the energy demands of booming economies are driving an exploration boom for energy resources including offshore drilling, the costs and availability of skilled workers will be a big restraining factor.

"The amount of money they are making an hour is just mind-boggling now, just five years ago they were making just half that," said Roberts, who moved to Singapore this year from Texas. He said his pay more than doubled in 1999 when the industry faced a labor shortage like the one that appears to be emerging.

Energy and mining offer good salaries, said Wyn James, a Singapore-based Briton who left a career in banking this year to open a firm that recruits and places workers in mining and oil extraction.

"What we are seeing now is an acute shortage of people actually with applied skills, from engineering or chemical backgrounds," James said.

"Even if the skills do exist globally, they don't necessarily exist in the place that is needed. So what we are doing is we are picking up people from all corners of the world and we are sticking them into projects, whether it's short-term or medium-term, but where they can earn reasonable money, live in a different country, live offshore, whatever that may be."

Offshore drilling is where the real money is, but opportunities are everywhere in the oil and gas business, despite the need and gains made by green technologies.

As China, India and Brazil make further inroads into oil and gas production, the job opportunities will increase exponentially. Last year, there were 540 offshore oil rigs in the world, and, by the end of 2012, the number should rise by 51 to 591, says Faststream Recruitment, a U.K.-based firm that specializes in hiring for the shipping, oil and gas industry.

The increase would mean more than 11,000 new jobs over the next 12 to 18 months from a total of 117,000, based on an average need of about 184 jobs on one rig, he said.

For unskilled workers in this industry, known as roustabouts and roughnecks, this has been an increase in pay that is unmatched in there industries, especially those that do not require a college degree. A roustabout can earn about $18-$20 an hour and a roughneck can earn about $28 an hour. They typically work 12 hour shifts for 14 days on and 14 days off of the rigs.

Just think of all the money you would save on gas and other commuting expenses.