Boeing plans to slash 2,000 jobs this year in a quest to eliminate ‘bureaucracy’ while hiring five times as many in other departments

“We expect about 2,000 reductions primarily in Finance and HR through a combination of attrition and layoffs,” Boeing said in a statement Monday. “While no one has been notified of job loss, we will continue to share information transparently to allow people to plan.”

The company, which recently relocated its headquarters to Arlington, Virginia, said it expects to “significantly grow” the overall workforce during the year. “We grew Boeing’s workforce by 15,000 last year and plan to hire another 10,000 employees this year with a focus on engineering and manufacturing,” the statement said.

Boeing’s total workforce was 156,000 employees as of Dec. 31, 2022, the company said.

The Seattle Times reported Boeing, which has been one of the largest private employers in Washington state, plans to outsource about a third of the eliminated positions to Tata Consulting Services in Bengaluru, India.

Mike Friedman, a senior director of communications, told the Times the other positions will be eliminated as the company makes reductions in finance and human resources support services.

“Over time, some of our corporate functions have grown quite large. And with that growth tends to come bureaucracy or disparate systems that are inefficient,” Friedman said. “So we’re streamlining.”

The Times reported about 1,500 of the company’s approximately 5,800 finance positions will be cut, with up to 400 more job cuts in human resources, which is about 15% of the department’s total staff.