United Space Alliance Makes List of Job Killers
AOL posted a list of the 12 worst job-killing companies in the US, and United Space Alliance comes in at number eight-
8. United Space Alliance
Number of Jobs Killed: 1,950
A major contractor for NASA, United Space Alliance announced in April that it would cut 1,950 jobs as the U.S. space agency began winding down its space shuttle program. The last of those flights was completed last month with the return of the Atlantis space shuttle. The end of the flights is expected to reduce United Space Alliance’s headcount by about half — to around 2,800.
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Well, USA was formed specifically to consolidate operations for the space shuttle. So if shuttle is retired, it kinda makes a lot of sense to retire that part of USA, no? It would be interesting to know how many brand new jobs USA managed to create from their commercial space efforts. I suspect Borders didn’t manage to create any new ones at all.
Its intersting to note that this administration chose to “nationalize” the auto industry (GM, Chrysler) by “loaning” them big $ to avert bankruptcy and “retain critical Mfg Jobs….” and yet takes the opposite approach to an equally critical skill area , one could argue even more critical “aerospace” .. wonder why? The nation had numerous auto mfg capability in place Ford , Toyota, Nissan, to name several that have large Mfg pressence in USA but still felt the need to retain even more capacity , but has chosen to reduce Aero- space mfg capability to almost nothing. Im not talking about the USA jobs at KSC as much as i am the design and mfg jobs all around the country as a result of the huge Gap we now have…. and there isnt an end in sight… wonder why??
Seems to be a rule that the aerospace industry takes it in the neck at rougly 20 year intervals. 1930 – stockmarket crash and Depression. Late 1940′s – end of WW 2 production. Late 1960′s – end of Apollo, end of Vietnam War production. Early 1990′s – end of the Reagan buildup, end of the USSR. 2010 – end of Shuttle, tail off of Middle East war procurement.
Is this a “law”? I’d not go that far. It’s probably an artifact of 4-year presidential terms. 20 years gives us a chance to see the effects wrought by two or three administrations and possibly one big international dust up. At any rate, we’ve been here before.
Because jobs that are related to government programs and services aren’t philosophically considered ‘real jobs’ these days (I guess flippin’ burgers at McDonalds for a minimum wage is considered a real job), over 500,000 government jobs (Federal, State, and Local) have been lost since Obama came to office. 500,000!!!
So Obama hasn’t exactly been a Roosevelt when it comes to government job creation. And, of course, most of these folks end up receiving unemployment insurance which pretty much means that they receive government money month after month after month for doing absolutely nothing.
And, of course, such large scale government unemployment usually creates more unemployment in the private sector due to reduced consumer demand and increased competition for private jobs.
The best time to increase the number of government employees is actually during a time when there is very low job creation in the private sector. And the best time to reduce the number of government employees and the deficit is during periods when there is lots of job creation in the private sector. Roosevelt and Clinton had it right!
During a time when there is low job creation in the private sector, the US should actually be increasing the NASA budget. We could have kept the shuttle program going while preserving thousands of government and private related Space Shuttle jobs for less than $3 billion a year until commercial crew and the SLS programs were fully operational. Then America would still be in space and not dependent on the Russians. And this could have been done for less than 0.1% of total Federal expenditures.