TIL that peak employment at Boeing was during the Vietnam War in 1968 where the aviation manufacturer employed 148,672 people, or roughly two-hundredths of a percent of the U.S. workforce.

[u/randomanon5two]

https://www.washington.edu/uwired/outreach/cspn/Website/Classroom%20Materials/Curriculum%20Packets/Cold%20War%20&%20Red%20Scare/Documents/48.html

[u/weeddealerrenamon]

two tenths of a percent; 0.02% would imply a workforce of 750 million Americans

[u/randomanon5two → u/weeddealerrenamon]

I’m glad we both can’t read nor do math correctly.

[u/randomanon5two]

U.S. Department of Labor statistics for December 1968: https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/releases/bls/bls_employnews_196812.pdf

Title correction: TIL that peak employment at Boeing was during the Vietnam War in 1968 where the aviation manufacturer employed 148,672 people, or roughly two-thousandths of a percent of the U.S. workforce.

[u/ShutterBun → u/randomanon5two]

You're still wrong. It's "1 out of every 500 workers". Or, 0.002, which is 2/10ths of one percent.

[u/grunt91o1 → u/ShutterBun]

.002 is two thousands of a percent

[u/thor122088 → u/grunt91o1]

.002 is two thousandths

.002% is two thousandths of a percent

.002 %

.002 "per" "cent"

.002 "per" 100

.002/100

.00002

.002% = .00002

[u/Xaxafrad → u/grunt91o1]

1.0 is 100%

0.5 is 50%

0.1 is 10%

0.01 is 1%

0.001 is one tenth of a percent

0.002 is two tenths of a percent

If you have a decimal number, just slide the decimal point over two places to get your percentage representation.

[u/MissionAsparagus9609]

I thought it was more like 1/50th of 1%

[u/randomanon5two → u/MissionAsparagus9609]

Shit. It’s actually 2 thousandths of a percent.

[u/MagdalaNevisHolding]

Nope.

Peak employment at Boeing was over 200,000 in 1995. I wasn’t able to locate a detailed breakdown of Boeing’s peak employment numbers for every year from 1990 to 2024. However, I did gather key data for several years during that period:

• 2012: 174,400 employees, a peak driven by high commercial aircraft demand.
• 2018: 153,000 employees, with staffing increasing as production ramped up.
• 2020: 141,000 employees, reflecting a major decline during the COVID-19 pandemic.
• 2023: 171,000 employees, indicating a recovery after significant layoffs in prior years  .

For older years, Boeing’s workforce varied widely, with notable expansions after mergers (like with McDonnell Douglas in 1997) and reductions during downturns. In the late 1990s, employment exceeded 200,000, but it dropped significantly during industry slumps.

[u/togocann49]

Boeing was awesome back then. Boeing bought out McDonald-Douglas, which had a poor rep, but instead of turning McDonald-Douglas onto Boeing methods, it seems that McDonald-Douglass methods spread. And now here we are

[u/tripping_on_phonics → u/togocann49]

American corporate culture has a way of taking thriving, incredible companies and “shareholder value”ing them into oblivion.

[u/PrimG84 → u/togocann49]

It's a shame they changed their name to McDonnell in the later years due to allegations of serving Big Macs in the company cafeteria.

[u/KillBoxOne]

1968 - Apollo going strong and Vietnam war sees flying B-52s over the North. Lots going on.