Boeing to cut 5% of commercial jet workforce as production ramp-up lags

Boeing will cut about 5 percent of the workforce in its Commercial Airplanes division, roughly 2,500 jobs, after concluding the unit has become overstaffed as the company slows its plans to speed up production of the 737 and 787 jets. Stephanie Pope, president and chief executive of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, told employees of the reduction in an internal memo on Monday, according to multiple news organizations that reviewed it, including Bloomberg, which first put a number on the cuts.

The reductions will come through a mix of layoffs and attrition, with notices to affected workers expected to begin as early as December. Boeing has not disclosed an exact headcount target, which factories or programs will be hit hardest, or whether union-represented machinists will be affected. The company's commercial-jet division employed 50,494 people as of the end of 2025, according to the workforce breakdown Boeing publishes on its corporate site; a 5 percent reduction against that base works out to roughly 2,525 positions, consistent with the figure reported by outlets who reviewed the memo.

A slower ramp, not weaker demand

The cuts are notable for what they are not: a response to falling orders. Boeing's commercial order backlog stood at a record $611.8 billion covering more than 6,300 airplanes at the end of the third quarter, by the company's own account. Instead, Boeing has chosen to decelerate the pace at which it restores output of its best-selling jet, leaving the factory floor staffed for a faster recovery than the one now underway.

The 737 program, built mainly at the Renton, Washington, factory, has been trying to climb back to a stabilized rate of 47 airplanes a month, a ceiling the Federal Aviation Administration imposed after the 2024 door-plug blowout on an Alaska Airlines jet. In its third-quarter earnings release filed with securities regulators, Boeing said only that the 737 program "continues to progress toward stabilized production of 47 per month," without committing to a new date; outside reporting on the October 27 earnings call indicates the company now expects to reach that rate in early 2027, roughly a year later than it had signaled earlier this year. The 787 Dreamliner, meanwhile, remains stuck at eight airplanes a month against a target of 10, the same release shows.

A costly quarter for the jet-making unit

The staffing move follows a rough quarter for Boeing's largest division. Commercial Airplanes reported third-quarter revenue of $10.72 billion, down 3 percent from a year earlier, and an operating loss of $697 million, for a margin of negative 6.5 percent, according to the results Boeing published through its newsroom. The company delivered 161 commercial jets in the quarter — 124 737s, 22 787s, 10 767s and five 777s — and booked 300 net new orders, including from Turkish Airlines, Ethiopian Airlines and Lufthansa.

Company-wide, Boeing narrowed its net loss to $116 million for the quarter, a sharp improvement from the $4.8 billion loss a year earlier, and total backlog across all divisions reached a record $745.4 billion. But investors focused less on the quarter just finished than on guidance for the years ahead. On the earnings call, chief executive Kelly Ortberg laid out a free-cash-flow path of roughly $2 billion this year, about $3 billion in 2027, $6 billion in 2028 and $10 billion in 2029 — pushing the $10 billion milestone back about a year from what analysts had been penciling in. Boeing shares fell as much as 11 percent in the days after the October 27 report, and slipped again, briefly touching $168.89 before closing down 0.6 percent at $172.38, on the day the staffing cuts became public.

In a company-published interview released alongside the earnings call, Mr. Ortberg defended the slower pace. "I know everybody wants us to go faster, but we're going to do it right," he told Boeing's own news service, adding that the priority was to "make sure that the production system is stable and we're delivering high-quality, safe aircraft."

"We have $745 billion of backlog, and it's our job to execute on that backlog in a profitable way," Ortberg said.

Who is affected, and how this differs from 2024

The cuts are the first reduction to Boeing's headcount since October 2024, when Mr. Ortberg, newly installed as chief executive, eliminated about 17,000 jobs — roughly 10 percent of the company's global workforce — in the midst of a 53-day strike by machinists and a wave of losses tied to the 737 MAX's post-grounding recovery. This round is far smaller and narrower, confined to the commercial-jet division rather than spread across the whole company, and is framed internally as a staffing correction rather than a crisis response.

• Scope: about 2,500 of roughly 50,500 Commercial Airplanes employees
• Method: a mix of layoffs and attrition, exact split undetermined
• Timing: notices expected to begin in December at the earliest
• Programs implicated: the 737 and 787 production lines, where output is running below plan

Which plants and job categories will absorb the reductions has not been specified. The 2024 round of cuts was concentrated among executives, managers and professional staff rather than hourly machinists represented by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers; it is not yet clear whether this round will follow the same pattern. Boeing's corporate investor relations channel has not posted a separate release on the workforce reduction, consistent with how Boeing has handled earlier mid-sized staffing adjustments that did not rise to the level of a material corporate event requiring a new securities filing.

What comes next

The near-term test is whether slowing the ramp-up now allows Boeing to avoid further disruptions later. The company has said it still intends to reach 47 737s a month and eventually push to 52 a month in the second half of 2027, with the 787 expected to resume its climb toward 10 a month once supply chains catch up. Notices to affected employees are expected in December, and Boeing has given no indication of when, or whether, it will disclose a final total. The cuts will be watched closely in Washington state's aerospace corridor, where the 2024 reductions and the preceding strike already strained the regional economy, and by airline customers waiting on jets against a backlog that both the company and its critics agree is not the problem.