"The job eliminations were a direct result of the retail side of our business slowing," she said.

"And if there are job eliminations, we will make sure people receive decent severances."

The combined effect of the asset sales and job eliminations will reduce the work force to less than 10,000 from 12,000, Varian said.

As a result, the number of job eliminations ended up being larger than he had anticipated.

And those are only the announced job eliminations.

The way we achieved it was to have the number of job eliminations increased from 119 jobs to 130 jobs.

The job eliminations were a cumulation of efforts that started in May when the workforce was reduced by 15 positions.

Most of the job eliminations will come from Aetna's three Hartford-area offices.

After this first round of job eliminations, a review of staff positions will be made to see if more jobs can be eliminated.

Once the latest job eliminations are made, the company will have fewer than half the 155,000 employees it had a year ago.