1.   The old mills, which had employed thousands, seemed to stretch on for miles.

2.   And although the company will continue to employ thousands of workers on the Allen Parkway campus, the headquarters and real power are shuffling off to New York.

3.   Before the textile business went south, and then offshore, the mills employed thousands of workers.

4.   Both agencies employ thousands of people, Furberg said.

5.   A battleship-sized lot is all that remains of a bearing plant that once employed thousands.

6.   But the government is more worried about setting a precedent for the liquidation of commercial banks, which are far larger than merchant banks and employ thousands of people.

7.   But the plans that do tend to belong to behemoth corporations that employ thousands of workers.

8.   Cisco Systems Inc., Sun Microsystems and Amgen Inc. are based in California, and all are establishing beachheads in Massachusetts that employ thousands.

9.   Factories that once employed thousands have been closed for years.

10.   Foreign aid groups that employed thousands of Afghans evacuated their foreign staff and curtailed operations.