Boeing has had a rather disastrous year, making headlines for a slew of aircraft safety and manufacturing issues, astronauts stranded in space, and worker strikes that all but halted production and profit. Like many other companies this year, they have made significant job cuts around the country.
In October, the company announced their plans to cut about 10% of its workforce by the end of the year. Most recently, they declared their intentions to lay off more than 2,000 workers in Washington only five days before Christmas.
Boeing Layoffs 2024
Boeing announced their intentions to layoff 10% of its workforce, resulting in more than 17,000 job losses. The states that are confirmed to have job cuts are Oregon, Colorado, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Arizona, and the most significant job losses will be sufffered in Washington. The layoffs will impact a total of 3,509 workers across these 7 states.
The dramatic cuts come as a reaction to the workers strike in Washington and Oregon which lasted two months. The strike cost the company anywhere between $50 milion and $150 million per day, according to Leeham News and Analysis and halted almost all of the areospace giant’s production and output of commercial jets.
Additionally, Boeing is looking to for ways to save after the billions of dollars they had to spend to salvage their reuptation and correct safety processes following a worrisome slew of manufacturing issues; namely the Alaksa Airlines 737 Max door that flew off mid-flight on January 5, 2024.
Boeing Layoffs in Washington
The state of Washington will be hit the hardest in terms of layoffs as the company announced more than 2,000 employees would be let go on December 20, 2024, a mere 5 days before Christmas. 425 of these employees are members of the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA), which seeks to assist workers in undersstanding their unemployment benefits and rights.
CEO Kelly Ortberg wrote to Boeing staff, “We will continue forward with our previously announced actions to reduce our workforce levels to align with our financial reality and a more focused and streamlined set of priorities… These structural changes are important to our competitiveness and will help us deliver more value to our customers over the long term”. The Boeing company layoffs will impact employees at all levels, including executives, managers, and manufacturers.
