Boeing is trimming its workforce by about 5% and slowing its commercial airplane production ramp up, the head of Boeing Commercial Airplanes Stephanie Pope told employees Monday.

The 5% workforce reduction will be a combination of layoffs and attrition, Pope said in the employee email, which was shared with The Seattle Times.

It’s not clear how many employees will be laid off. Those who are affected will be notified in December.

Boeing had nearly 182,000 employees as of December 2025, the most recent employee head count available on the company’s website. Of those, nearly 50,500 worked in its commercial airplanes division.

Pope told employees that Boeing needed to “reset the pace of our production rate ramps” to give the company’s own factories and its suppliers “time to achieve stability.”

“Adjusting our production schedules and reducing aircraft output puts us in an overstaffed position,” Pope continued. “Unfortunately, that means we need to align our staffing levels to our revised business plans.”

Boeing told analysts during its most recent quarterly earnings call in October that it would not meet its target for 737 Max deliveries this year, citing problems with its Renton wing shop. It also said it would not increase monthly Max production until mid-2027 and that it would slow its production increase for the South Carolina-built 787 Dreamliner.

Boeing significantly trimmed its workforce in 2024, after a harrowing door plug blowout at the start of the year and a Machinists strike in its Puget Sound factories that fall. Those cuts impacted about 10% of the company’s workforce, or about 17,000 employees at the time.

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