Boeing’s trajectory as it strives to dig out of a deep hole is strangely the inverse of the giant tech companies.Google, Microsoft and Meta all made billions every quarter last year and are now busily laying off tens of thousands of employees.Boeing lost $5.1 billion in 2022, while it hired 23,000 new people, according to employment figures released Friday. With attrition and retirements, Boeing’s worldwide workforce grew last year by nearly 14,800 net, bringing the total to 156,354.And this year, Boeing says it plans to hire 10,000 more, mostly in manufacturing and engineering jobs.A state-by-state breakdown of Boeing’s employment figures posted annually on the company website and updated Friday shows that Boeing employment in Washington state grew 8% in 2022, adding more than 4,400 net jobs.
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That brought Boeing’s workforce in Washington on Jan. 1 to 60,244, making it the second largest private employer behind Amazon, which has about 85,000 employees in the state. The bump up in Boeing’s workforce here comes after two years of substantial job losses. In 2020, when the pandemic first paralyzed air travel and with the 737 MAX still grounded, Boeing shed a total of nearly 15,000 jobs in Washington. In 2021, it shed more than 1,000 more.Workers needed for recoveryThe turnaround is partly due to the rapid post-pandemic return of air travel worldwide that has airlines eager to get airplanes.Another factor, paradoxically, is the dire collapse of Boeing’s business over the past four years. To recover, it needs people. During the pandemic, the tech companies hired aggressively when people locked down all over the world needed access to their products. Now, the companies find they don’t need so many.
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In contrast, the airlines as well as …