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LOS ANGELES — Boeing Co. said Thursday it will lay off about 1,000 people from its satellite manufacturing arm in Southern California as it restructures to deal with tough competition in the uncertain economy. 

The announcement came four months after Boeing cut 400 other jobs at the satellite division because of the slowing economy. 

The Chicago-based company has slashed more than 15,000 jobs nationwide and plans to cut as many as 30,000 jobs by mid-year, most of them from its Seattle-based Commercial Airplanes division. The layoffs announced here Thursday are not part of the 30,000 previously announced. 

The new round of cuts include reductions in manufacturing and support staff along with some engineering positions at Boeing facilities in El Segundo and Torrance, said company spokesman George Torres. 

“We are restructuring in general to be more competitive in a very tough market,” he said. 

Boeing acquired the satellite business, which employs about 9,200 people, last year. The unit is the world’s largest producer of satellites for military and commercial markets. 

The weak economy has slowed orders from commercial customers, Torres said. 

The struggling telecommunications industry saw a number of companies such as Lucent Technologies Inc. and Global Crossing Ltd. falter financially. 

Many of those companies were looking to use satellites to help build global wireless communication systems and space-based broadband systems for the Internet. 

“They (Boeing) have been building a satellite a month for a long time, but they’re looking at the future. They’re not seeing the kind of orders they’ve had,” said Marco Caceres, a senior space analyst with the aerospace research firm the Teal Group, 

Boeing hopes the final cuts in Southern California will involve no more than 700 people through efforts to reassign workers to 350 current openings and encourage others to retire early, Torres said. 

But getting a transfer can be tough. 

“When you try to match skills with other parts of Boeing, most of the openings are on the engineering side,” he said. “There aren’t as many in manufacturing.” 

Torres said Boeing remains committed to expanding its satellite business. 

The company intends to proceed with plans for a 35,000-square-feet addition to its El Segundo satellite factory and continue pursuing new military business that could create about 1,300 new jobs by 2005. 

It is also on track to build 12 global positioning satellites for the U.S. Air Force in the fourth quarter of 2002.