The Boeing Company was founded in Washington State’s Puget Sound region 97 years ago, and until the closing days of the 20th Century it didn’t have much in the way of operations elsewhere. But beginning with its acquisition of McDonnell Douglas in 1997, the company gradually began to expand the range of domestic locations where it had major facilities. The most important recent development in that trend was the establishment of a 787 Dreamliner production facility in Charleston, South Carolina. A raft of company announcements this year may signal acceleration in the movement of jobs away from Puget Sound, as sizable cuts in the number of production, engineering and IT workers there coincide with disclosure of plant expansions and new design centers elsewhere. I have written a commentary for Forbes here.
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