Boeing share prices continued their decline on Monday, much to the chagrin of Puget Sound-area employees hoping for a bigger payout through a stock-based incentive program.

Shares of Boeing closed today at $65.72, down $1.20. The good news, for workers, is that was still above the $54 a share target price set to trigger the payout from the Share Value Trust. The bad news, however, is that the share price has dropped by more than $21 a share since its most-recent peak on May 19.

It's the biggest one-month drop in Boeing stock values since the post-September 11^th collapse in 2001, fueled by fears that high fuel prices will force airlines to cancel or postpone deliveries. Never mind the fact that Boeing's all-time-record backlog is so great that it could sustain a 30-percent hit and still be at levels comparable to some of the best years of the Jet Age. (Trust me on this; I ran the numbers on sales and backlog over the past 20 years and found that Boeing's sales over the past three years are roughly equal to the best six year sales period that Boeing and McDonnell Douglas had ever had, combined, prior to 2004.)

Furthermore, the overwhelming majority of the planes now on the books are going to foreign buyers who are having no problems getting financing for their purchases.

If share prices had stayed up in the mid-$80 range, workers who have been with Boeing for all of the past four years would be looking at payouts of upwards of $3,000, which would be paid primarily in shares of stock. The decline, however, means the payout will be closer to $1,000. (Boeing hadn't finished calculating the size of the payout Monday afternoon, a spokesman told my friend Susanna Ray at Bloomberg News.)

Still, a thousand bucks worth of Boeing stock isn't such a bad thing to have - especially if the contrarians are right, and BA shares at $65 represent a long-term value proposition. Instead of cashing out their shares, Boeing workers may want to hold on for a rally - which, of course, is bound to disappoint Puget Sound retailers hoping for an infusion of big Boeing bonus bucks this summer.