The worst isn’t over for Boeing employees; more cuts are coming

Thousands more job cuts are coming to Boeing as the company struggles with the fallout from the two MAX crashes and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Boeing CEO David Calhoun sent a letter to employees this morning telling them the worst isn’t over.

“As we align to market realities, our business units and functions are carefully making staffing decisions to prioritize natural attrition and stability in order to limit the impact on our people and our company,” he wrote. “We anticipate a workforce of about 130,000 employees by the end of 2021.”

That would be nearly double the amount of job cuts the company planned on taking. Boeing had planned to trim its global workforce by 10%. More than 12,000 jobs have already been lost in Washington, and our state is expected to continue to take losses in the commercial aviation division.

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The third quarter results aren’t pretty. The company had a net loss of $466 million, on revenues of just $14 billion. In the third quarter of 2019, the company reported $20 billion in revenues, and a net profit of over one billion dollars.

But to really understand how far Boeing has fallen, you need to go back to 2018.

Q3 of 2018 was the last quarter before the first of the two MAX crashes, and the company hadn’t started to see the impact of that on its bottom line. Just two years ago, Boeing reported $25 billion in revenue for the third quarter, and a net profit of over $2 billion.

Two crashes of its signature new plane and then a pandemic that has seen passenger air travel almost disappear, and you can see just how Boeing got here.

Calhoun tried to stay positive with employees by ending his letter this way:

“By working together and focusing on these priorities, we will emerge as a stronger company that is competitively positioned to deliver on our commitments to customers and realize new opportunities.”

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