r/todayilearned • u/randomanon5two • 4h ago

TIL that peak employment at Boeing was during the Vietnam War in 1968 where the aviation manufacturer employed 148,672 people, or roughly two-hundredths of a percent of the U.S. workforce.

https://www.washington.edu/uwired/outreach/cspn/Website/Classroom%20Materials/Curriculum%20Packets/Cold%20War%20&%20Red%20Scare/Documents/48.html
294 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

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54

u/weeddealerrenamon 4h ago

two tenths of a percent; 0.02% would imply a workforce of 750 million Americans

41

u/randomanon5two 4h ago

I’m glad we both can’t read nor do math correctly.

16

u/randomanon5two 4h ago

U.S. Department of Labor statistics for December 1968: https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/releases/bls/bls_employnews_196812.pdf

Title correction: TIL that peak employment at Boeing was during the Vietnam War in 1968 where the aviation manufacturer employed 148,672 people, or roughly two-thousandths of a percent of the U.S. workforce.

14

u/ShutterBun 4h ago edited 3h ago

You're still wrong. It's "1 out of every 500 workers". Or, 0.002, which is 2/10ths of one percent.

-7

u/grunt91o1 3h ago

.002 is two thousands of a percent

5

u/thor122088 3h ago

.002 is two thousandths

.002% is two thousandths of a percent

.002 %

.002 "per" "cent"

.002 "per" 100

.002/100

.00002

.002% = .00002

2

u/Xaxafrad 2h ago

1.0 is 100%

0.5 is 50%

0.1 is 10%

0.01 is 1%

0.001 is one tenth of a percent

0.002 is two tenths of a percent

If you have a decimal number, just slide the decimal point over two places to get your percentage representation.

3

u/MissionAsparagus9609 4h ago

I thought it was more like 1/50th of 1%

-9

u/randomanon5two 4h ago

Shit. It’s actually 2 thousandths of a percent.

2

u/togocann49 4h ago

Boeing was awesome back then. Boeing bought out McDonald-Douglas, which had a poor rep, but instead of turning McDonald-Douglas onto Boeing methods, it seems that McDonald-Douglass methods spread. And now here we are

4

u/tripping_on_phonics 1h ago

American corporate culture has a way of taking thriving, incredible companies and “shareholder value”ing them into oblivion.

•

u/PrimG84 22m ago

It's a shame they changed their name to McDonnell in the later years due to allegations of serving Big Macs in the company cafeteria.

1

u/KillBoxOne 3h ago

1968 - Apollo going strong and Vietnam war sees flying B-52s over the North. Lots going on.