Boeing plans to cut about 2,000 white-collar jobs in finance and human resources, and it will be shifting some of that work to an outside contractor in India.
Although Boeing will reduce office staff, the company is preparing to add 10,000 employees focused on engineering and manufacturing.
The company said that job cuts will be accomplished through a combination of attrition and layoffs. Boeing said that the employees who will be laid off have yet to be notified. Some of work conducted by the staff being let go will be contracted out to Tata Consulting Services in Bengaluru, India, while other work will be eliminated through streamlining and simplifying processes.
“We have and will continue to communicate transparently with our teams that we expect lower staffing within some corporate support functions so that we can focus our resources in engineering and manufacturing and directly supporting our products, services and technology development efforts,” said the company in a statement. “As always, we will support affected teammates and provide assistance and resources to support their transition.”
Boeing announced several rounds of job cuts that reduced staffing by 20,000 employees to 141,000 during 2020 as the pandemic caused demand for aircraft to fall sharply. Many customers canceled orders for planes, most notably the 737 Max, which remained grounded for most of the year following fatal crashes in late 2018 and early 2019.
But Boeing grew its workforce by 15,000 last year, bringing employment back to 156,000. And it said it plans to hire another 10,000 engineering and manufacturing employees this year.
