U.S. aerospace employment has reached its lowest level since 1953, dropping to 689,000 jobs at the end of 2002. Based on the latest data from the Department of Labor‘s Bureau of Labor Statistics, the figure should serve as a call to action for a national plan to revitalize the aerospace workforce, according to Aerospace Industry Association (AIA) President and CEO John W. Douglass.

Aerospace employment has dropped by 106,000 jobs, or 13 percent, since Sept. 11, 2001. It has fallen by nearly half, or 642,000, since December 1989, a period that marks the end of the Cold War. Douglass said the workforce decline is the result of several converging factors: the crisis in civil aviation and commercial space business, industry mergers and acquisitions, and the Sept. 11 attacks.