Workforce
2016 – Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency Employment – Snapshot
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) workforce remained constant from 2015 to 2016, shedding just ## employees. Of the ## space professionals working at JAXA in 2016, nearly…
2016 – Japanese Space Industry Employment – Snapshot
The Japanese space workforce ## by ##% from 2014 to 2015, ## workers. This continued a trend of ## that began after a ## point for the industry in 2008. Since that time…
2016 – European Space Agency Employment – Snapshot
At ##%, the percentage of female employees is slightly ## in the European Space Agency (ESA) than the European space workforce as a whole, but the proportion of young professionals is…
2016 – U.S. Army Space Workforce – Snapshot
The Army Space Workforce, referred to as the Space Cadre, reached ## billets in FY 2017, an increase of more than a ## from FY 2016. Although they account for less than ##% of the total, with…
2016 – U.S. National Security Workforce – Snapshot
The U.S. national security space workforce is composed of federal employees working across all branches of the Department of Defense as well as the intelligence agencies. Together, there are more…
2016 – NASA Workforce – Snapshot
Like the industry as a whole, NASA’s workforce has experienced steady ## in size. From the start of FY 1993, the earliest date for which data is available in NASA’s…
2016 – Workforce: Space Workforce
2016 – U.S. Space Industry Employment
In 2015, the most recent year for which data is available, the U.S. civilian space sector included ## individuals. Employment is essentially unchanged from 2014, when ## individuals worked in this area. Longer-term trends, however, show…
Geographical Distribution
NASA has many facilities and operations in many states, and NASA contractor jobs are high-skill, high-salary positions. When these jobs are lost, communities often have difficulty replacing them, and the employees encounter difficulty in finding similar positions in the local area. In order to keep the skilled technical workforce associated with the shuttle program from relocating elsewhere, many local communities affected by NASA layoffs have invested in job-transition assistance and worker retraining programs in alternative skill sets.
U.S. Space Industry Outlook
In December 2015, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released the 2016-17 Occupational Outlook Handbook (OOH). The OOH provides employment projections for the decade from 2014 to 2024. Among the 329 occupational profiles are four particularly applicable to the space industry: Aerospace Engineers, Aerospace Engineering and Operations Technicians, Astronomers, and Atmospheric and Space Scientists.