The airplane manufacturing giant, Boeing, has faced various cutbacks over the past couple of months which have forced the company to undergo multiple waves of employee layoffs. On April 21, the company was let go of 429 workers in Washington State. Overall, Boeing employment is at a pretty bad low, with only 70,640 employees, verses 1989’s 106,670. As Boeing continues to downsize, we can expect more cutbacks and layoffs in the future, especially in Washington State. The layoffs range from engineers as well as technical staff. Overall, though the company is still very big and powerful, the downsizing has still exposed a major weakness in the fact that Boeing is not able to support the wages of so many workers, especially since many of them earn a good salary. The layoffs have slowed down recently so hopefully the downsizing will not continue into the summer, but it’s hard to tell right now.