Clearly, there is money to be made in space. SpaceX’s historic initial public offering netted the company $2 trillion. And as shares in Elon Musk’s company coming down from the high IPO, there is still a boom in the space economy that is creating a new job market for Americans.
The space economy is growing domestically and globally, at an annual rate of 9%, according to the World Economic Forum. In the US, total production in the space economy increased by approximately 51.5 billion from 2012 to 2023. The total value of the sector reached an all-time high of 613 billion dollars in Q2 2025, according to the Space Foundation.
As the space economy grows, it creates jobs nationwide. In the private sector alone, more than 373,000 workers work in aerospace jobs, according to the latest estimates from the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis. That remains a small fraction of the total US private sector workforce, but one that is growing rapidly. Space industry employment is expected to increase by 27 percent over the decade to 2024, far outpacing the private sector’s total employment growth of 14 percent, and its fastest growing rate in recent years. From 2019 to 2024 alone, the space economy job market has grown by 18%.
Young workers in particular have played a major role in this growth. According to the US Census Bureau, nearly half of the new jobs added in the aerospace economy are filled by workers under the age of 35, accounting for an overall increase in the number of young workers of 3% from 2014 to 2024. Across all major lines of work in the aerospace sector, there has been an increase in the share of young workers employed. That means the sector is not only growing, but also bucks the trend of declining shares of young workers seen in all sectors surveyed in the census, including professional services and media.
Dean Boerner, lead data scientist at Revelio Labs, found in his latest study looking at tens of thousands of documents from aerospace companies that the industry is outperforming the broader labor market in providing current job opportunities.
“Active shipments by aerospace companies are up more than 40% year-over-year as of this month (and generally up throughout this year, compared to 2025),” Boerner said. “Overall US shipments are down about 5%, making the expansion of opportunities within aerospace even more remarkable,” he added.
Compensation for a space-based career is attractive. The private aerospace industry has a combined annual revenue of approximately $57.9 billion, with median annual salaries varying by occupation, but generally between $100,000 to $135,000.. Base salaries, however, are only one part of the employee compensation package seen in the private sector. Employers of the private capital market often offer stock options, which give employees an opportunity to get in early on what could be a large publicly traded company. In the case of SpaceX’s historic IPO, thousands of current and former employees became overnight millionaires thanks to the shares they previously owned. More than 100 have seen a net worth of more than $1 billion.
“This job market is competitive, often with thousands of applications for each entry-level role,” said Dave Baldwin, director of talent acquisition at . Firefly Aerospacewhich went public in August.
However, thousands of positions in these companies remain unfilled on any given day. In fact, despite the attractive roles and increasingly promising trends in the growing sector, employment in the aerospace economy has largely failed to keep pace with industrial growth. Aerospace companies of all types, in recent years, have experienced long hiring periods, high attrition rates, and ongoing labor shortages. One reason is that the profession relies heavily on highly skilled workers, disproportionately within the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields.
Recent estimates show that more than half of private sector space economy jobs “require STEM skills,” nearly double the national average. STEM skills, as important as they are, pose a real barrier to firms looking to recruit and retain new talent. Only about a quarter of the American workforce has formal STEM training, an even smaller portion with the professional background needed in aerospace manufacturing. For employers developing their presence in the space economy, this means continuing to compete for a select pool of employees with the skills needed to sustain current operations and long-term growth.
SpaceX, in its S-1 filing prior to its IPO, acknowledged this issue as a potential risk to investors, saying: “We depend on our ability to hire and retain employees with advanced engineering and technology skills, and increased competition for such employees could increase costs and affect our ability to meet development and production schedules.”
“The current tight labor market has had a negative impact on our ability to hire qualified workers, including engineers, especially in relation to our AI segment,” the newspaper noted, emphasizing the challenges posed by the rapid growth of the space economy.
Revelio Labs data shows the magnitude of the problem, with a 45% delta in active postings between the sector and the rest of the economy (a 40% increase in aerospace job postings and a 5% decrease in all US jobs).
Several active, high-profile employers in the aerospace sector are at the forefront of hiring struggles. Lockheed Martin has the second most open postings of all employers, with 10,614, a number that is up more than 5,000 from this time last year. Company RTX CORP leads all employers with 12,871 vacancies worldwide. According to Boerner, the most in-demand roles are, in order, Security Engineer, Information Security, Integration Engineer, Reliability Engineer, and Materials Engineer, each role requiring at least a bachelor’s degree in a related field of study.
The 2025 report of the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA), conducted in collaboration with McKinsey & Co., found that the rate of decline in the aerospace industry, from 2021 to 2024, sits at about 16%, more than 10% more than any other industry category. Seventy-six percent of all AIA member organizations worldwide reported “ongoing challenges” in recruiting engineers on a regular basis.
Skilled workers for local production are in short supply
Staffing challenges in this sector extend to key manufacturing roles, with 56% of organizations reporting challenges recruiting and identifying skilled manufacturing talent. About 30% of the work done in the space economy revolves around the production of skills, labor needed to produce space vehicles, space weapons, and satellites.
Satellites, in particular, have been driving recent growth as space markets move from exploration, at least in the near term, to commercial. By 2024, according to estimates by the Space Foundation, the space products and services industry accounted for more than half of the total economy, a change largely caused by the development and growth of satellite technology. It is a trend supported by the importance of satellite-based data in the global economy, for example, in improving shipping in unprecedented ways and improving the supply chain of global trade, allowing companies to make their industrial capacity more efficient and expand their reach to consumers around the world.
But the industry does not have the capacity to manage the required talent.
“The challenge is that there are plenty of mechanics, printers and technicians to meet the demand,” Baldwin said. “There are many industries (eg, automotive, semiconductor, biotech) in addition to aerospace that compete for the same types of skilled workers,” he added.
For Firefly’s recruiters and peers, investing in early talent at the right stages is a critical issue. The AIA report revealed that among aerospace companies struggling with recruiting and retention, only 20% have taken steps to improve or expand training programs. In fact, creating and expanding training programs lags behind transfer bonuses to current employees, increased geographic employment opportunities, and changing compensation models.
“It is important for commercial real estate companies to partner with local high schools, community colleges and universities to develop skills-based programs and help increase the supply of available skilled workers,” said Baldwin. “We’ve been expanding these efforts at Firefly, providing hands-on experience in proven launch, lunar, and in-space programs. We also provide training and coaching to help veterans transition into the workforce as part of the DoD SkillBridge Program.”
The Club for the Future, an early education foundation founded under Jeff Bezos-led space company Blue Origin in 2019, says its mission is to “inspire future generations to pursue STEM careers and help shape the future of life in space.”
As of 2021, the foundation has donated tens of millions of dollars to educational programs and space-based charities. Almost every major private aerospace manufacturer funds extensive internship programs throughout the year, although the programs are often highly competitive, and their frequency decreases among smaller employers.
While SpaceX is likely to remain a volatile stock, it is becoming increasingly embedded in the market, and will soon be added to the Nasdaq 100 index. If the SpaceX bulls are right, the investment in early education will pay off for decades to come for employers and employees. SpaceX investor Ron Baron says the company will grow faster than most people expect. The billionaire fund manager recently told CNBC that he did not sell a stake in the IPO and expects the company to be worth at least $20 trillion in 10 years. “Typically, our economy doubles roughly every 10 years,” Baron told CNBC’s Becky Quick. “What he thinks is that, with the new strategies and the work he is doing, he will make the economy grow 10 times in 10 years, not twice.”
