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Expansion Pace Slows As Boeing Slashes Hiring Aerospace Giant May Add Fewer Than Half The Total Hired In 1996

Sean Griffin Scripps-Mcclatchy

The Boeing Co. expanded its work force last year at its fastest pace in 30 years.

This year’s a different story.

“There is limited hiring still going on, but it is by no means as aggressive as it was last year,” said Boeing spokesman Peter Conte. “I don’t think we’ll even reach by half what we hired last year.”

In 1996, Boeing grew by one-third, adding 42,000 workers - 21,000 by new hiring, 21,000 by acquiring Rockwell International. About 16,000 of the new hires were for jobs in Washington state.

This year, as of March 20, Boeing had 150,981 workers worldwide. That’s an increase of 3,381, or 2.3 percent, since Jan. 16 - the first employment reporting date of the year.

Two-thirds of the new jobs were in Washington state, where 60 percent of all Boeing workers live.

In Washington, Boeing had 91,443 workers on March 20, up from 89,072 on Jan. 16. When the latest aerospace downturn bottomed out in 1995, Boeing was down to 71,834 workers in the state - one-third fewer than the 106,670 Boeing had six years earlier.

Seattle economist Dick Conway, who tracks Boeing’s impact on the Puget Sound economy, expects Boeing to add 6,000 to 7,000 workers in Washington during the year.

“That is quite a bit fewer than the 16,000 in 1996,” Conway said. “The upshot of that is that growth will slow down from a projected 5 percent growth rate for employment in 1997 to 3.5 percent in 1998.”

But even that level, Conway said, is a substantial improvement over the first half of the decade, when the Puget Sound economy grew at an annual average rate of 1.2 percent.

At 3.5 percent, Conway said, “the economy will still be growing rapidly, more than twice as fast as the national economy - even as Boeing employment growth slows down.”

Last year’s hiring, spokesman Conte said, was intended to meet 1997’s projected production needs by hiring workers and providing the training necessary to maximize production when the run-up strikes later this year.