Boeing layoffs a sign of the times

More pink-slips will be issued to Boeing employees today as the company seeks to shed another 900 jobs. The cuts are expected to hit the Puget Sound region hard because the bulk will be made in the company's Commercial Airplane unit whose employees are largely based here. In January, it was announced that 4,500 layoffs in the Commercial Airplane unit would be made through attrition and layoffs.

While Boeing is less of player in the region's economy than it was in the early '70's when the running joke was the last one to leave Seattle should turn off the lights -- with global commerce knocking at our door and a large tech and e-commerce industry in our backyard -- a large number of laid off workers will hit local retail and service industry jobs particularly hard. That has a spiraling effect.

Those of us who grew up here know that we've been through this before and we'll survive it again this time. However, with the current state of the economy we can probably expect the recovery to be more gradual than it once was. Let's just hope that things don't get much worse before they get better.