In an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos this week, President Donald Trump stumbled on his words, saying that Elon Musk "does good at rockets". The President was responding to the fact that SpaceX ($PRIVATE:SPACEX), Musk's space company, successfully tested a catastrophe scenario for its Crew Dragon spaceship.

The President followed up by saying that Musk is "one of [America's] great geniuses, as we have to protect our genius." 

Mr. Trump is right, though: Elon Musk does do good at rockets, and SpaceX is now hiring for at least 508 openings, just off from its all-time high in November 2019 of 512 openings.

The number of openings is significant: it signals continued investment in SpaceX's future as well as a clear path toward manned missions and, ultimately, missions to Mars.

It's also worthwhile to note that at this time last year, SpaceX was hiring for around 185 people. Given this week's 508 openings, SpaceX hiring is up 175% year over year.

SpaceX hiring has been largely focused on production as of late, a sign that the company is busy building rockets, spaceships, and satellites. Perhaps interesting is that the "NonDestructive Evaluation" category has seen some uptick in hiring in recent weeks, a possible sign that new products are reaching a more practical testing phase. But then again, we don't do good at rockets here at Thinknum Media, so we'll leave that interpretation to the experts who do do good.

About the Data: 

Thinknum tracks companies using the information they post online - jobs, social and web traffic, product sales, and app ratings - and creates data sets that measure factors like hiring, revenue, and foot traffic. Data sets may not be fully comprehensive (they only account for what is available on the web), but they can be used to gauge performance factors like staffing and sales. 

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