Mass Layoffs Multiply Against Machine-Tool Core of U.S. Economy

The machine-tool production and machine- engineering sector is the core of the U.S. economy's ability to invent, apply scientific breakthroughs, progress in productivity, and recover its strategic strength from the collapse. Located for nearly the past century in the auto and aerospace sectors of the economy, it is being devastated by a combination of reduced funding of NASA space exploration, aircraft/airline bankruptcies, and the blowout of the personal and business aircraft markets in the financial collapse. Machine-tool "consumption" (investment) by U.S. firms has plunged by two-thirds in one year, and is down to one-eighth of its 1980 peak.

Aside from the 30,000 "missing jobs" in aircraft production center Wichita, Kansas alone in the past year, reported in the Oct. 23 morning briefing, other mass layoffs are occurring in rapid succession.

The Salt Lake Tribune reported Oct. 23 that the aerospace- rocketry engineering center, built around Hill Air Force Base, has seen over 1,000 layoffs since mid-Summer. Shuttle booster rocket maker ATK Corp laid off 550 workers because of insufficient funds for NASA's new Ares I-X rocket on which ATK is working. Moog Aircraft, which makes flight controls for business jets, laid off 220 a month ago. SkyWest Airlines laid off 300, many of them mechanics.

In Hartford, Connecticut, Pratt & Whitney Canada will lay off more than 400 workers, 5% of its total workforce, including 250 losing their jobs by Christmas. It also will shut a plant in its home base of Longueuil, Quebec, eliminating another 160 jobs. The company's announcement said "there are no signs of a recovery in 2010."

In Everett, Washington, Boeing is laying off 4,500 production workers and engineers this year, with rumors reported by Kiro-TV that an additional 300 are going in November. Boeing's increasingly serious problems with orders and production for its new 787 Dreamliner and 747-8 freightliner planes are also causing other layoffs, including those by Sundstrom in Wichita.

In Michigan's auto supply industry, according to those working in the industry, the situation is beyond mass layoffs to destruction of physical-economic capability completely. Even the Internet auctioning-off of machine tools from closed plants to cheap labor countries, common 3-4 years ago, has died away. Now, the machine tools are simply hauled out of the plants and cut up for scrap dealers. One industry contractor named four large, closed auto plants which have been converted to huge warehouses for copper and aluminum scrap—for speculation on international metals futures markets.