Boeing’s Safety Turnaround Slowed by an Employee Skills Gap

During the series of aircraft incidents and damning revelations that followed a Boeing 737 MAX losing its side panel at 16,000 feet on January 7, critical focus turned to past management decisions to place blame for the company’s decline. Critics said the weakening of company safety procedures in its aircraft production was due mainly to continual cost-cutting aimed at boosting shareholder returns. But as Boeing’s subsequent efforts to revamp its manufacturing systems and culture progress, another internal challenge has come to light–one shared with many businesses across the U.S.: Its struggle to fill job openings with an influx of candidates who often lack the required skills.

That skills gap further complicates Boeing’s work to reinforce and monitor production safety practices and standards. It has plenty left to do. First, it must convince Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) officials it has definitively resolved the systemic failings that led to the dramatic January 7 incident and other aircraft mishaps that followed. Until it does, the agency will keep in place the current production cap of 38 737 MAXs per month–a restriction crimping the company’s ability to deliver its best-selling aircraft to increasingly impatient customer airlines. 

Yet even as it implements new manufacturing procedures to maximize safety, Boeing must also train new, often underskilled hires to fill many vacant spots created when thousands of experienced employees left during the pandemic. That gives the company what a Wall Street Journal report called “Boeing’s Urgent Mission to Train Thousands of Rookies.” 

“Legions of senior machinists retired when the pandemic hit and in the years since,” the Journal wrote of the radical whipsawing of halted production and the subsequent abrupt resumption as restrictions eased. “The company, racing to meet demand for new jets as travelers returned to the skies, has been on a hiring spree to replenish its ranks.”

Just how big has that staff renewal been? According to the paper, Boeing last year hired an average of 800 people every month in the Seattle area alone. Among the more than 30,000 employees represented there by a major machinists union, “roughly half have less than six years of experience”–over twice the pre-pandemic number with a similar level of experience.  

In concrete terms, that means new people with limited or no work history in aviation–or in many cases, any kind of manufacturing or machine labor–have had to complete, or are still going through training programs to get up to working speed. Those new arrivals then rely on remaining assembly line veterans to correct them or offer pointers–when their own duties allow time to help.

The upshot is that Boeing must continue hiring less qualified candidates for job openings, and then dedicate enormous amounts of time and effort to training them to the level the company needs to improve production safety. And it has had to do so while revamping its entire production system to satisfy FAA expectations.

That mix of formidable tasks is unique to Boeing, but the skills gap it faces is a problem plaguing many companies across the country.

The 22 million jobs eliminated by the pandemic have since been replaced by new positions, with hundreds of thousands more created monthly–318,000 in May alone. The urgent need to fill those openings has exacerbated an already tight labor market, forcing more business owners to hire and train less qualified candidates than they would have accepted before. But it’s taking a toll.

According to a 2024 Springboard survey of business leaders, 70 percent believed their worker skills gaps had already begun negatively affecting company performance, with nearly 40 percent saying the problem is getting worse. Some estimates predict reduced GDP output—attributable to insufficient employee skills or experience—will amount to $1.2 trillion by 2030, with a Rand forecast calculating the potential global cost as high as $11.5 trillion by 2028. 

A study published last year by McKinsey found 87 percent of companies viewed the skills gap as a pressing concern to their business, with 60 percent of all U.S. employees sharing that sentiment.

But while those employee shortcomings are undeniably frustrating and costly to every affected business, Boeing must address them while also grappling with other problems, ncluding its need to find a new CEO. That, and re-creating its entire manufacturing process under the unyielding scrutiny of FAA officials, is a challenge compounded by rising impatience among customer airlines waiting for their new planes.

That difficult mix, along with the changed realities of the labor market, led the head of Boeing’s commercial airplane unit, Elizabeth Lund, to tell the Journal the road back to full, safe production will take a while to navigate.

“Our hiring pipeline that used to be rich with people out of the military, or people already from this industry, or people that had grown up doing mechanical type of work has changed pretty drastically,” Lund said. “They’re not coming in with that much, so we’re placing more time and emphasis on teaching those skills.”