Opinion pieces and speeches by EPI staff and associates.

THIS TESTIMONY WAS GIVEN BEFORE THE COMMISSION ON THE FUTURE OF THE UNITED STATES AEROSPACE INDUSTRY ON MAY 14, 2002.

The Aerospace Sector as a National Asset

by Jeff Faux

The aerospace industry is a unique strategic asset for America. In addition to its obvious national security benefits, the industry makes, and must continue to make, a critical contribution to our economic growth and rising living standards.

U.S. aerospace is a major source of:

• Technological innovation with substantial spillovers to other industrial and commercial sectors.
• High wage employment, which spreads the benefits of rising productivity throughout the U.S. economy.
• Exports, which America will need to substantially increase in order to resolve the growing problem of our current account deficit and rising foreign debt.

Thus, a healthy aerospace industry ought to be a primary goal of our nation’s economic policy. It represents the cumulative private and public investments of past decades. Allowing it to wither is, in effect, a national decision to abandon those investments.

Lose the People, Lose the Industry

We cannot separate the industry from its labor force. Indeed, it is the highly trained technical workers and their tradition and culture of technological innovation that comprise the core value of this asset. People are not commodities that can be discharged this year and immediately replaced “off the shelf” next year. If we lose the people, we lose the industry.

In recent years, we have been losing the people. Between 1989 — the peak of the last business expansion — and 2001, the aerospace industry lost 524,000 jobs. Total employment in the aerospace sector at the end of this period, 2001, was 790,000. This includes workers developing and manufacturing aircraft and engines, guided missiles, space vehicles, component parts, and other aerospace related employment (Table 1).

Table 1
Aerospace Industry Employment, 1982-2000 (thousands)
Aircraft, Engines, and Parts						Guided Missiles, Space Vehicles, & Parts	All Other Aerospace Related Employment
	Total Aerospace	Total	Aircraft	Engines & Engine Parts	Other Aircraft Parts
1982	1,038	584	320	149	115	131	323
1983	1,019	562	305	140	117	141	317
1984	1,058	575	306	140	129	154	329
1985	1,151	616	326	148	143	177	358
1986	1,241	656	339	154	163	200	386
1987	1,282	678	356	158	163	206	399
1988	1,294	684	369	156	159	208	402
1989	1,314	711	382	154	175	194	408
1990	1,302	712	381	152	180	185	405
1991	1,214	669	356	143	170	168	378
1992	1,100	612	332	127	153	146	342
1993	966	542	301	109	131	124	300
1994	855	482	271	95	115	108	266
1995	796	451	244	93	114	98	248
1996	796	458	243	95	120	90	248
1997	859	501	262	100	138	91	267
1998	896	525	272	103	150	92	279
1999	847	496	254	101	141	87	263
2000	800	465	233	101	131	86	249
2001	790	463	228	101	134	82	246
Change in Employment, 1995-2001
Number	-6	12	-16	8	20	-16	-2
Percent	-0.8%	2.7%	-6.6%	8.6%	17.5%	-16.3%	-0.8%
Source: EPI Analysis of AIAA (1996, 1997, 2000 and 2002)

These high-wage, high skill jobs are part of the core foundation of the modern U.S. economy. Technologically-intensive aerospace production creates extremely important positive spillover effects for the rest of the economy. For every one aerospace worker, 3.9 other jobs are created. In comparison, every job in the retail trade sector generates only .⁹ other jobs.

While aerospace workers are losing their jobs, the rest of the U.S. economy is not producing jobs that demand these workers’ high skills. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that Aerospace production workers have hourly earnings roughly 1.4 times that of the average hourly earnings for all manufacturing workers and 2.2 times that of hourly earnings for retail trade workers. A 1996 survey of aerospace workers laid off from the Lockheed-Martin plant in Marietta, Georgia and from the Boeing plant in Seattle, Washington, found that less than 17 percent were re-employed in the aerospace industry. Of those workers who found any new employment, nearly half reported earning less than 75 percent of their previous hourly wage.

Inasmuch as the time period in Table 1 compares business cycle peaks, the dramatic reduction in employment cannot be attributed to general business conditions. The major sources of the decline are cuts in defense spending, cyclical fluctuation in the demand for civil aircraft, loss of market share to Airbus, technical change and productivity improvements, and offset arrangements that transfer high technology abroad.

Given the environment of weakening sales, the robust productivity which is a characteristic of the industry produced large cuts in the workforce. It is difficult to separate the various sources of Aerospace’s declining employment, but we can say for sure that increased foreign competition — both in the domestic and overseas markets — accounted for a substantial share of lost jobs. Between 1989 and 2001, the import share of domestic sales rose 8.5 percentage points. If the share of imports had remained constant, U.S. aerospace employment would be at least 15.3 percent higher today: an additional 80,000 jobs.

Falling domestic demand, particularly in the military sector, also reduced U.S. aerospace employment. Total industry revenues, in real terms, declined 12 percent during this business cycle as shown in (Table 2). If demand were unchanged in 2001, relative to 1991, aerospace employment would be 17.5 % higher – another 92,000 additional jobs.

Table 2
Aerospace Industry Revenues (millions of constant 1987 dollars)
	Total Aerospace	Total Aircraft	Civil Aircraft	Military Aircraft (a)	Missiles (a)	Space (a)	Related Products & Services
1979	71,528	41,546>	20,830	20,717	7,524	10,307	12,150
1987	110,008	59,188	15,465	43 ,723	10,219	22,266	18,335
1988	112,869	59,986	18,738	41,248	10,118	23,953	18,812
1989	114,250	58,341	20,761	37,579	12,912	23,956	19,042
1990	123,734	65,703	28,786	36,916	13,057	24,352	20,622
1991	124,998	68,149	33,611	34,538	9,847	26,169	20,833
1992	118,555	63,221	34,129	29,092	10,057	25,518	19,760
1993	102,482	54,766	27,551	27,215	7,031	23,604	17,081
1994	90,104	46,983	20,861	26,122	6,164	21,941	15,017
1995	86,572	44,215	19,249	24,965	5,933	21,996	14,429
1996	92,196	47,590	21,207	26,383	6,320	22,920	15,366
1997	102,959	55,402	29,286	26,116	6,289	24,109	17,160
1998	115,168	65,332	38,658	26,673	6,016	24,627	19,195
1999	118,784	68,571	40,905	27,666	6,820	23,596	19,798
2000	109,828	61,662	36,359	25,303	7,109	22,753	18,305
2001p	110,480	61,551	36,887	24,663	7,875	22,642	18,413
2002e	104,572	55,111	28,375	26,736	9,355	22,678	17,429
Changes in Constant Dollar Revenues
1979-1990	70%	55%	36%	75%	71%	132%	67%
1990-1995	-30%	-32%	-33%	-32%	-54%	-9%	-30%
1995-2002e	21%	25%	47%	7%	58%	3%	21%
1989-2002e	-8.5%	-5.5%	36.7%	-28.9%	-27.5%	-5.3%	-8.5%
Source: EPI analysis of AIAA (1996, and AIA Statistics)

Productivity growth, broadly defined as output per worker, also probably eliminated significant amounts of aerospace employment between 1989 and 2001. However, the available data do not allow us to separate with confidence the effects of rising productivity from the effects of weakening demand. In the absence of data on capital inputs employed by aerospace producers in this period it is impossible to estimate the effects of total factor productivity growth, as it is usually measured by economists. Even if we make all of the technical assumptions that favor the “productivity” explanation for job decline, it leaves us with a minimum of more than 170,000 jobs lost for other reasons.

The Airbus Challenge

The major, but not the only, source of this challenge has been the expansion of the European aerospace industry reflected in the loss of market shares to Airbus. Direct employment in the European aerospace industry surpassed 429,000 in 2000. It is estimated that the European aerospace industry generates twice this number of jobs in related industries within the aerospace supply chain. Between 1995 and 2000, European direct aerospace employment grew steadily at 2 percent annually, adding 42,000 jobs (Table 3).

Table 3
European Aerospace Sales and Employment
	EU Revenues (Bil. 2000 Euros)	Employment (‘000s)
1982	42.1	560.2
1983	43	559.5
1984	45.8	540.2
1985	48.8	558.4
1986	54.3	565.6
1987	56.5	569.4
1988	58	564.9
1989	62.7	563.1
1990	64.3	561.1
1991	60.9	524.7
1992	58.4	480.3
1993	52.2	437.3
1994	49.2	407.5
1995	47.2	386.7
1996	53.7	382
1997	62.9	395.5
1998	66	422.5
1999	67.4	426.7
2000	72.3	429.1
% 1995-2000	53.2%	11.0%
Annual growth
1995-2000	7%	2%
Source: European Association of Aerospace Industries.

The pattern of competition from the European aerospace industry can be seen clearly in the employment numbers (Tables 1 and 3). Both EU and U.S. aerospace employment declined in the 1980s and early 90s because of a downswing in demand for civil and military aircraft that bottomed out in 1995 (Table 2). In addition, the European industry was at an early stage in its development, in which one would expect bigger than normal gains in worker productivity and firm efficiency as they progressed up the learning curve. Between the cyclical peak in 1989 and the trough in 1995, U.S. aerospace employment fell 39 percent and European employment fell 31 percent (Tables 1 and 3).

But by the mid-1990s airbus had made serious inroads on U.S. market shares both here and around the world. The result was that between 1995 and 2000 EU aerospace employment rose 11 percent while U.S. employment remained essentially flat, gaining .⁵ percent, and then in 2001 fell again.

Aerospace Employment Outlook

The future is not bright. It is true that the aging U.S. civilian air fleet will have to be refurbished at some point, but U.S. producers’ share of both world and domestic markets is eroding. Airbus continues to make inroads and the foreign content of domestically produced aircraft is expanding. Both aspects of growing international competition pose threats to future employment in the U.S. aerospace industry.

Table 4 shows the outlook for U.S. aerospace employment through 2010 under three different growth scenarios. The high growth scenario assumes that Boeing’s share of the world market for commercial airplanes will grow while the foreign content of U.S. aerospace products, through outsourcing and offsets, remains constant. Under this scenario, U.S. aerospace employment would add 110,600 jobs between 2002 and 2010. The medium growth scenario assumes that Boeing’s current market share remains unchanged while the foreign content of U.S. output is held constant. Under the medium growth scenario, U.S. aerospace employment will fall 76,300 jobs between 2002 and 2010.

Table 4
Aerospace Employment Outlook
	Historical Data	Boeing ’00 Market Outlook	Teal, constant share, no int’l outsourcing	Teal, falling share,w/int’l outsourcing
1986	655.8	655.8	655.8	655.8
1987	678	678.0	678.0	678.0
1988	683.5	683.5	683.5	683.5
1989	711	711.0	711.0	711.0
1990	712.3	712.3	712.3	712.3
1991	669.2	669.2	669.2	669.2
1992	611.7	611.7	611.7	611.7
1993	542	542.0	542.0	542.0
1994	481.5	481.5	481.5	481.5
1995	450.5	450.5	450.5	450.5
1996	458.1	458.1	458.1	458.1
1997	500.6	500.6	500.6	500.6
1998	525.1	525.1	525.1	525.1
1999	494.9	494.9	494.9	494.9
2000	458.3	440.8	426.8	402.1
2001		452.7	415.9	373.1
2002		464.9	405.2	345.4
2003		477.5	394.8	319.9
2004		490.4	384.7	294.9
2005		503.7	374.8	271.0
2006		517.3	365.2	247.9
2007		531.3	355.8	226.2
2008		545.7	346.6	205.5
2009		560.4	337.6	185.5
2010		575.6	328.9	166.5
Change in Employment
2002-10		110.6	-76.3	-178.9
Source: AIAA, Boeing 2000, Teal Group.

For reasons discussed below, the high and medium growth trends seem overly optimistic and ignore the dynamic competitive environment in the aerospace industry. A more credible scenario would recognize the realities of increasing foreign competition and shifts in the composition of demand. The third, low-growth, scenario, therefore represents our current trajectory. It reflects the current trends in Airbus’s growing world market share and the increasing foreign content of U.S. aerospace products. Under this scenario, the U.S. aerospace sector will shed 178,900 jobs between 2002 and 2010

Of the factors affecting our low-growth of estimates of future U.S. aerospace employment, increasing competition in world markets is by far the most significant, accounting for 41.5 percent of the change in employment, or 74,244 lost jobs between 2002 and 2010. Job losses due to import penetration of foreign engines and parts account for an additional 11.5 percent of total job losses. Together, growing foreign competition for U.S. aerospace products explains 53 percent of the expected lost jobs through 2010.

Aerospace Trade, Outsourcing and Offsets

The U.S. aerospace trade surplus peaked at $41 billion in 1998 and has since fallen $15 billion, or 37 percent, (more than 11 percent annually) (Table 5). Between 1989 and 2001 U.S. aerospace imports grew on average twice as fast as aerospace exports. While U.S. aerospace exports have been declining since their high in 1998, imports of foreign made parts and equipment continue to accelerate steadily. These trends in aerospace trade can be explained by three factors.

Table 5
The Relationship of U.S. Aerospace Revenues to Exports, Imports, and the Balance of Trade (Billions of Current Dollars)
Year	Total Aerospace Revenues	Total Aerospace Export Revenues	Exports as % of Total Aerospace	Total Aerospace Import Revenues	Imports as % of Total Aerospace	Aerospace Balance of Trade
1979	$45.4	$11.7	25.9%	$1.6	3.6%	$10.1
1989	$120.5	$32.1	6.6%	$10.0	8.3%	$22.1
1990	$134.4	$39.1	29.1%	$11.8	8.8%	$27.3
1991	$139.2	$43.8	31.4%	$13.0	9.3%	$30.8
1992	$138.6	$45.0	32.5%	$13.7	9.9%	$31.4
1993	$123.2	$39.4	32.0%	$12.2	9.9%	$27.2
1994	$110.6	$37.4	33.8%	$12.4	11.2%	$25.0
1995	$107.8	$33.1	30.7%	$11.5	10.7%	$21.6
1996	$116.8	$40.3	34.6%	$13.7	11.8%	$26.6
1997	$131.6	$50.4	38.9%	$18.1	14.0%	$32.3
1998	$148.0	$64.1	43.3%	$23.1	16.1%	$41.0
1999	$151.1	$62.4	41.3%	$25.1	16.6%	$37.3
2000	$143.7	$59.0	41.0%	$25.7	17.9%	$33.3
2001	$169.4	$58.5	34.5%	$32.5	19.2%	$26.0
Source: EPI analysis of Aerospace Facts and Figures (1999, 2000 and 2002)

First, the U.S. aerospace industry is facing increasing competition in global markets from firms like Airbus that have been specifically developed through state supported industrial policies to be national industrial “champions.” From its inception in 1970 through 1990, Airbus received government subsidies in the form of grants and soft loans totaling $26 billion. More recently, the British, French, German and Spanish governments have spent $4 billion in development loans on the Airbus A380, which are to be repaid with future sales revenues. The total cost of developing the A380 is estimated at $10.7 billion.

Over the long run, we can expect that the commercial sector of the aerospace industry will represent a larger share of the total market. The market share of Airbus and other European aircraft producers began to rise sharply in all significant markets after 1992. Measured by the number of aircraft, the European aerospace industry is already reaching parity with the United States. Airbus expects to provide fully 50 percent of world aircraft deliveries in 2003. Looking into the near future, Airbus may be pulling ahead of Boeing. Airbus booked 53 percent of orders for new commercial aircraft in 2001 worth $44.7 billion, while Boeing booked $29.6 billion.

We should also note that currently Airbus is competing with Boeing in markets for small and mid-size aircraft, such as Boeing’s “bread and butter” 737 line. At present, Boeing’s line of 747 jumbo jets enjoy little, if any, competition at present. But Airbus is online to introduce its new A380 super-jumbo in 2006 and has already booked 97 orders. Airbus expects to sell some 1,500 A380s in the next twenty years.

The competition to sell new products into this market is now fierce, and failure to keep pace with the state subsidized Airbus system will be costly. Airlines have shown preferences for amassing fleets from a single supplier in order to realize economies of scale in supply chain management and to bargain for volume pricing. By sticking to one “brand,” airline managers need only deal with one set of replacement parts and its mechanics can specialize in maintaining fewer models of more similar aircraft. This
means today’s winner for market sha

Outsourcing has become more than just a way to get cheaper components and parts. In order to off-load some of the costs of research and development, U.S. firms are entering into joint partnerships with state-subsidized firms in other nations. Under such arrangements, for example, a U.S. engine producer may outsource the design of a sub-component of a new engine to a foreign aerospace company. In return for sharing some of the up-front risks associated with developing new products, the part producer gets the right to produce those engine components. While engines might represent a quarter of the cost of a new aircraft, it is just a one-time cost. But, in order to maintain safety, aircraft engines are continuously overhauled and rebuilt with replacement parts. Thus, in the life of a plane, the demand for parts far outpaces the demand for engines. Indeed, Boeing salespeople have boasted to the French airlines that their planes are more “French” than Airbus’s.

One measure of the impact of import penetration in the U.S. aerospace industry is the ratio of imported engines and parts to total aircraft sales (both commercial and military). As shown in Figure 1, the ratio has more than doubled from 8 percent of production in 1981 to more than 20 percent last year, and has accelerated in the past three years. This chart shows that the foreign content of U.S. aircraft is increasing dramatically.

Third, foreign aerospace sales are increasingly being linked to the practice of offsets. Offsets are arrangements to transfer high-skilled jobs and valuable technologies to other countries in exchange for market access for U.S. aerospace products, and are common in both the commercial and defense aerospace sectors. For example, in exchange for purchasing U.S. aircraft, many countries require U.S. aerospace firms to produce parts of that aircraft in the purchaser’s country. Offsets result in the loss of high-skill U.S. jobs and the loss of cutting-edge technologies. In some cases pose a threat to national security and aviation safety. In time, these transfers will help spawn new entries into the market for parts and components, and eventually into markets for fully integrated aircraft designs and manufactured systems.

China is one of the most aggressive countries in pursuing offset agreements and, with its market potential and minimal labor standards, it has substantial leverage in negotiating these agreements. Examples of how U.S. and European aerospace firms enter into voluntary and mandatory offset agreements with China include:

• Xian Aircraft Co. builds fins, horizontal stabilizers and doors for the Boeing 737; ribs for the Boeing 747; doors for the Airbus A300, A310, A330 and A340; and carbon fiber fin ribs for the Airbus A320.
• Chengdu Aircraft Co. makes vertical fins, horizontal stabilizers and tail sections for the Boeing 757, MD-80 and MD-90.
• Shenyang Aircraft Co. makes cargo doors for the 757; wing ribs and emergency exit doors for the A320; and machine parts for the A300 and A310.
• Shanghai Aircraft Co. makes components for the 737 and jointly assembles the MD-80 and MD-90.
• Airbus has donated a $50 million flight simulator for training pilots in Beijing.

Ironically, while much technology and production has been transferred to China, U.S. aerospace exports to China remain quite small — 5.8 percent of total U.S. aerospace exports in 1998, the last year for which we have data. This indicates that the benefits from offsets have been limited, while the costs in terms of job losses and lost technologies are significant.

Offsets also transfer security-sensitive aerospace technology and production to other countries, fostering the proliferation of defense systems and undermining essential sub-tier defense production in the United States. Technology transferred to Brazil through an offset resulted in an improvement of targeting capability of the Iraqi Scud missile system. Under another offset arrangement, McDonnell Douglas sold machine tools to China for use in production of commercial aircraft, but some of these were diverted to the production of Chinese military equipment.

In this case, both U.S. and European aerospace workers are engaged in a “prisoner’s dilemma”: fear of losing market access to each other makes them willing to trade away critical technologies and value-added steps in the production process in return for immediate sales.

Aerospace and the Current Account Deficit

It is clear that the U.S. current account deficit — driving by the chronic excess of imports over exports — is unsustainable. In 2000 the U.S. current account deficit was $450 billion, 4.5% of GDP. The recession reduced the deficit somewhat last year, but it was still above $400 and 4% of GDP. As the economy recovers, the deficit will continue its relentless expansion. As last year’s report of the US Trade Deficit Commission showed, for an equal increase in national income in the US and foreign countries, the United States increases its imports proportionally more than its exports.

The Wall Street firm of Morgan Stanley recently warned of a current account deficit reaching 6 percent of GDP by the end of 2003. As the Economist magazine observed, studies — including one done at the U S Federal Reserve — indicate that when the current account deficit reaches 5 percent, international financiers begin to pull back.

In order to finance this deficit the United States has had to borrow from other countries and sell them more of its assets. Thus, each year its economy must devote more of its income to interest on the debt and the transfer of profits to investors in other countries. After 1988, these payments began to exceed foreigners’ remittances to the United States.

This net foreign “debt” is now 22 percent of GDP. Assuming a recovery, the U.S. economy is on trajectory of a debt of roughly 40 percent of GDP within five years. Nobel prize-winning economists Franco Modigliani and Robert Solow last year characterized the large and growing deficit in the U.S. international trade balance as “the greatest potential danger facing the economy in the years to come.”

The dollar is the world’s most important reserve currency and America has better credit and more assets to sell. But it is a matter of simple arithmetic that it cannot forever borrow in order to buy more from the rest of the world than it sells. The interest burden will eventually be so heavy that foreign investors will be unwilling or unable to keep financing the rising debt. When that happens, the dollar will drop and interest rates will spike upward. The United States will then be forced to run a trade surplus with a drastic devaluation of the dollar and/or a draconian deflation in real incomes in order to reduce demand for imports and make U.S. goods cheap enough to run a surplus in world markets. An overvalued dollar makes it hard for even the most productive U.S. companies to compete in global markets. As an aerospace industry executive recently remarked: “We still probably do less off-shore sourcing than most industries, but with the dollar where it has been the last couple years, there’s even more pressure to look offshore.”

Economists at Goldman-Sachs estimate that cutting the current account deficit in half by devaluation alone would require a more than 40 percent drop in the dollar’s value.

Clearly the preferred way to address this danger is by increasing our exports rather than decreasing our incomes to force Americans to import less.

But as the U.S. industrial base has shrunk, so has our capacity to expand exports in the tradable goods sectors. Moreover, we clearly would prefer to expa
nd the export of high value goods. This makes the aerospace sector crucial if the U.S. is to weather the inevitable adjustment in its current account deficit. Today, rather than watch the aerospace export surplus shrink, we ought to be devising ways to expand it, not for some mercantilist notions of trade, but because we will soon find ourselves rather desperate for industries that can help us export our way out of the problem rather than adjusting through a lowering of living standards.

The more that we hollow out the aerospace sector, the more that we allow its U.S. base to be eroded by other nations’ industrial policies, the more difficult it will be to export our way out of the problem. Both labor and capital need a sense of commitment in order to make the sustained investments of money and training required for a sustained expansion.

Recommendations

Recognizing that every other nation seriously involved in aerospace has a high-level commitment to promoting a healthy industry, a formal inter-agency group on aerospace should be established in the Federal Government. Members of the groups should include at least: the Secretaries of Commerce, Defense, Labor, Transportation, and Treasury and the US Trade Representative.

Among its tasks would be to develop:

• Policies and procedures to discourage US firms from engaging in offset agreements. At the same time, reopen discussions with the EU on a common front towards developing country offset rules.
• Programs that could help assure that US manufacturers are positioned to take advantage of the expected wave of new domestic orders for the replenishing of the US commercial aircraft fleet.
• Strategies for increasing US aerospace exports, beginning with a study of the effect of the high dollar on the competitiveness of the US aerospace sector.
• Expanded investments in training and workforce development programs to assure that the economic opportunities from an expanded aerospace sector accrue to US workers.
• Support trade policies that give the U.S. an even playing field and require enforceable labor rights and standards in all international trade and investment agreements.

Conclusion

Anyone of the economic reasons — hi-wages, technological innovation and concerns with our deteriorating balance of payments — would justify public action to stabilize and expand the US aerospace sector. The existence of all three make such action imperative.

---

Notes

^1. This employment figure includes total employment for aircraft, engines, parts, missile and space industries from the BLS plus aerospace-related employment in communications equipment, instruments and other industries calculated with an input-output matrix by the AIAA. Just looking at the BLS data (SIC codes 372 and 376) significantly underestimates aerospace employment (approx. 545,000 in 2001 for these two categories).

^2. There is a time lag between aircraft production and final sales that reflects the time and complexity involved in manufacturing aircraft. The lag can be seen in Tables 1 and 2 where employment peaks a year or two before a peak in total revenues. Because of this time lag, it is appropriate to use 1989 as a base year for examining the employment effects of changing imports and 1991 as a base year for examining the employment effects of changing demand.

^3. The European and U.S. job to job totals are not strictly comparable. Therefore, the direction of change in both is more reliable than the absolute levels.

[ POSTED TO VIEWPOINTS ON JUNE 13, 2002 ]

Jeff Faux is president of the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C.