Boeing Says It Will Cut 5,000 More Jobs : Aerospace: Figure brings total for year to 12,000. Most of newly targeted will take early retirement.

Boeing Co. said Tuesday that it will cut 5,000 more jobs this year than previously targeted in a bid to trim its non-manufacturing work force and slash costs to stay competitive.

The world’s largest commercial aircraft manufacturer said it now expects to cut about 12,000 jobs this year, or 10% of its work force, up from its earlier estimate of 7,000.

The new target, most of which will be achieved through Boeing’s first-ever early-retirement offer, reflects not only sluggish demand, but also the company’s aggressive effort to reduce manufacturing costs by 25% over five years to lure back jetliner customers.

“These additional job reductions are the result of efforts to trim the size of our non-manufacturing work force and improved processes to design and build aerospace products more efficiently,” Chairman Frank Shrontz said in a statement.

Boeing’s announcement comes less than a week after the Seattle-based company delivered the first of its new 777 jetliners to United Airlines, which has agreed to buy 34 of the long-haul aircraft for about $4 billion.

Industry analyst Bill Whitlow at Pacific Crest Securities said the job cuts, painful as they may be in the Puget Sound region where Boeing is the dominant employer, are a sign that the company is succeeding in reducing its costs.

“There’s no indication that this is a precursor to a production rate cut,” Whitlow said. He said the additional 5,000 jobs being eliminated come from the company’s engineering and support staffs rather than manufacturing.

Even when airplane orders begin to pick up again, as they are expected to do soon, following a five-year downturn, Boeing executives hope to meet the renewed demand without adding to the company’s work force.

Boeing’s payroll has shrunk to about 113,900 from 117,300 at the start of the year and a peak of 166,000 in 1989.

“We’re trying to avoid the ups and downs,” Boeing spokesman Chris Villiers said. “We want to be able to hold employment fairly stable.”

Boeing said that so far, 6,000 of the 13,000 eligible employees have accepted the early-retirement offer, which is open until June 16 to workers age 55 and over.

Company executives now estimate that 7,000 people will take advantage of the offer, which will result in a one-time charge of more than $400 million as Boeing pays the upfront costs of the reductions.

Whitlow said the fact that the company plans to eliminate another 5,000 jobs indicates that the retirements have done little to defray the need for layoffs.

More than 2,000 workers have received notice that they could be laid off by Friday, which along with the retirements effective July 1 should account for the bulk of the additional job reductions this year.