Boeing Co.’s Huntington Beach-based Delta rocket workers may not need to call a real estate agent after all.
As part of a planned satellite combination with Lockheed Martin Corp., Boeing is set to shift workers to Denver, where the Boeing-Lockheed venture will be based.
But aerospace workers are a hot commodity.
Raytheon Co. has hired about 500 workers at its Space and Airborne Systems division in El Segundo this year. It wants to hire another 700 workers by the end of 2005.
Employees at Boeing’s rocket division are prime prospects for Raytheon’s El Segundo space unit, which has about 7,000 workers in all.
“We’ve been doing strategic hiring, targeted outreach to those Boeing employees,” said Sabrina Steele, spokeswoman for Raytheon.
Raytheon’s recruiting efforts include newspaper advertisements in the Orange County Register and job fairs in OC.
Competition for skilled aerospace engineers is stiff. Boeing itself has been known to hire skywriters to fly the beaches to lure candidates.
General spending on military weapons, planes and other gear, plus the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, have spurred defense-related hiring for a couple of years.
And the commercial aerospace market has rebounded in the past year. Airbus and Boeing’s commercial units have stepped up spending after nabbing new airplane orders.
“People are looking to hire,” said Christopher Allen, director of public affairs for the California Manufacturing Technology Consulting group in Gardena. “There are very good jobs available in the industry right now.”
For more on this story, see the Aug. 15 edition of the Business Journal.
