Boeing cuts 5% of its jet workforce even as a record backlog waits to be built

Boeing is cutting about one in every twenty jobs in the division that builds its passenger jets, and the reason is not a shortage of buyers. Its factories cannot turn out planes as fast as the company promised, so it now has more people on the payroll than its slower production plan needs.

That paradox reaches far beyond the plant gates. The jobs being cut belong to the people meant to clear a queue of airliners that carriers worldwide have already ordered, and every month it moves slowly means fewer new seats, older planes kept flying and less pressure on ticket prices.

In a memo to staff, Stephanie Pope, who runs Boeing Commercial Airplanes, said the unit would shrink its workforce by approximately 5% through a mix of attrition and involuntary layoffs. “Adjusting our production schedules and reducing aircraft output puts us in an overstaffed position,” she wrote, adding that Boeing had to give “our factories and supply chain partners additional time to achieve stability.” Boeing has not said how many jobs will go or where. The division employed 50,494 people at the end of 2025, according to the company’s website, which implies roughly 2,500 positions, an estimate rather than a company figure.

The wing line that sets the pace

The bottleneck is specific. Chief executive Kelly Ortberg told investors last month that wing production had been slower than expected and that Boeing would not significantly raise output of the 737 MAX, its bestselling jet, until the second half of next year. Boeing is still trying to hold a steady 47 MAX jets a month, a rate executives had said in May they would reach by the summer, before moving to 52. Chief financial officer Jay Malave said it would miss its goal of delivering 500 737s this year.

Demand is not the problem. Boeing’s third-quarter results showed a record backlog of $745 billion, including more than 6,300 commercial airplanes, while the commercial unit lost $697 million from operations. United Airlines, Ryanair and dozens of other carriers have built their growth plans around jets that keep arriving late. For an airline, a missing plane means a route that does not open or an older, thirstier jet kept flying another season.

What a smaller payroll does not fix

Fewer workers will not repair a wing factory. Scott Hamilton, managing director of the aviation consultancy Leeham Company, told Seattle’s KOMO News that he had doubted Ortberg’s early promise to raise output in steps of five jets every six months. “For the FAA to authorize Boeing to go to rate 52, which means giving the production certificate to the north line in Everett, Boeing has to prove that it can sustain rate 47, which Boeing has admitted it has been unable to do,” he said. There is a second risk: a company that sheds trained workers a year before it hopes to accelerate may have to rehire and retrain them when the line is ready.

For employees, this is the second round in two years. In late 2024, after a machinists’ strike and the fallout from a door plug that blew out of an Alaska Airlines 737 MAX 9 in flight, Boeing cut about 17,000 jobs, roughly 10% of its companywide workforce. Pope promised to treat affected staff with “dignity and respect” and offered transition services and layoff benefits. The reduction applies only to the commercial airplane division, whose 737s are assembled in Renton, outside Seattle, and suppliers face the same slower schedule. Investors barely flinched: Boeing shares slipped 0.7% on the day of the memo and are down 21% this year.

Layoff notifications begin in December. Boeing now expects to reach a steady 47 737s a month in early 2027 and is targeting 52 in the second half of that year, the milestone that will show whether these cuts were a pause before hiring again or the first sign that the ramp is slower still.

Tags: layoffs, Boeing, Kelly Ortberg, 737 MAX, aviation, Stephanie Pope