US Congress Attempts to Boost Future Aerospace Workforce

DID has covered the Aerospace Industries Association’s recent report showing the US aerospace industry’s global trade surplus, and testimony re: defense procurement improvvements. AIA also notes that the average American aerospace employee is in his or her 50s, far older than the levels that prevail in other high-technology sectors. Fully 27% of aerospace workers will become eligible for retirement by 2008. The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed an AIA-supported bill to create a federal inter-agency task force on aerospace workforce revitalization, which charges 11 executive branch agencies, including NASA and the Defense and Homeland Security departments, to identify new aerospace workforce opportunities through a variety of scholarship, training, and recruitment programs in partnership with the private sector and state governments. Reps. Vern Ehlers [R-MI] and Ellen Tauscher [D-CA] introduced H.R. 758 earlier this year, and it cleared the House by a unanimous vote. DID offers its readers links to the bill’s text, as well as and related debates and proceedings. As is true for most successful political bills, H.R. 758 represented different things to different constituencies, and attempted to grapple with several issues at once. Rep. Ehlers [R-MI] noted that: As the aerospace industry supports over 11 million American […]