In the face of hundreds of billions of dollars in defense budget cuts that would begin next year if Congress can’t agree on longer-term budget plans to whittle the national deficit, the consulting firm Deloitte yesterday issued a new study that details the impacts of the aerospace and defense industry have at the national and state levels.
The report was commissioned by the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA), which last year began sounding warnings to national leaders about the devastating impact the budget cuts would have on employment and other economic metrics in the United States.
This report rigorously measures the industry’s impact on jobs, GDP (gross domestic product), taxes paid, and a host of other metrics,” Marion Blakey, president of AIA, said yesterday during the release of the report, which is titled, The Aerospace and Defense Industry in the U.S.: A financial and economic impact study.
Among the high-level metrics noted in the report, are estimates that the U.S. aerospace and defense industry directly employed 1.05 million workers in 201 and that the federal government employs over 845,000 aerospace and defense skilled workers across a number of agencies and departments. In addition, the more than 1 million aerospace and defense industry workers received $84.2 billion in wages, paid $15.4 billion in federal taxes, and $1.9 billion in state income taxes, the report says.
Nearly half, 49 percent, of the total industry employment in the U.S. is in seven states, led by California and then followed by Washington, Texas, Florida, Arizona, Connecticut and Virginia. The top 20 states account for nearly 20 percent of the total industry employment, the report says.
The report also estimates that aerospace and defense companies paid $5.5 billion in corporate income taxes and $1.7 billion in state and similar business taxes.
The combination of direct and indirect employees associated with the aerospace and defense industry amounts to over 3.5 million jobs, excluding the workers employed by the federal government and airlines, Deloitte says. The report also notes that the industry is the nation’s largest net exporter in terms of revenues.