But the workforce shrank and the Japanese came into the market.
New Jersey's civilian workforce shrank in the past six months, during which time more than 20,000 residents simply gave up looking for work.
Sales of $1.3 billion in 1989 plunged to $319m in 1994; profits of $63m turned into losses of $166m; and the workforce shrank from 17,000 to 6,000.
And as the Silicon Valley workforce shrank and most of those low-wage jobs were sent offshore, the group turned its attention to other issues.
Today, 138.6m Americans are in work, a near-record, both in absolute terms and as a proportion of the population (see chart).Of course some firms wither Reynolds Tobacco's workforce shrank by nine-tenths between 1980 and 2002 but others grow: Wal-Mart's by 4,700%.
But its workforce shrank too, as many of the unemployed simply stopped trying to find a job.
As the country's workforce shrinks and capital accumulates, its saving rate will fall and new investment opportunities will become more elusive.
Last year, amid calls in parliament for the flag-carrier to be dissolved, Mr Musallam began aggressively cutting costs: the fleet contracted from 38 to 27 aircraft; the workforce shrunk from 3,800 to 2,750; and 2,000 supplier contracts were renegotiated.
As China's workforce shrinks and its wages rise, up to 85m manufacturing jobs might migrate elsewhere, according to Justin Lin, a former chief economist at the World Bank and now at Peking University.
And Mr Tilford finds it "astonishing" that a country with a current-account surplus as big as Germany's insists on balancing its budget.Demographic decline could initially be a blessing, shifting power to workers as the workforce shrinks, with the subsequent increase in labour costs boosting domestic demand (see chart 4).
