Jul. 23--Despite reporting a 61 percent jump in profits, Air Products and Chemicals announced Wednesday it will close an unspecified number of plants and slash 1,150 jobs worldwide within a year.

The latest staff reductions for the Lehigh Valley's third-largest employer come six months after the Trexlertown company announced plans to cut 1,400 jobs globally in an effort to weather a recession that has lowered the demand for oxygen and other gases Air Products supplies to industrial and medical users.

Spokeswoman Betsy Klebe refused to say if the cuts will target any of the workers at the company's Hamilton Boulevard headquarters or its plant in Hometown, Schuyl- kill County, that makes industrial gases.

Air Products, the world's largest hydrogen producer with annual revenues of more than $10 billion, employed 21,000 workers in more than 40 countries a year ago. The layoffs will reduce its work force by 12 percent, to about 18,450 employees.

Klebe would not disclose the departments affected by the reductions, citing worker privacy.

Laurence Alexander, an analyst at Jefferies & Co. in New York, told Bloomberg News that restructuring may be "fairly severe" in the electronics unit, which is the company's worst performer.

Klebe said the company has made about half of the 1,400 job reductions it announced in January. She would not say if any workers have been laid off at headquarters, where about 4,100 were employed before the layoffs, or in Hometown, where 300 were employed.

"All I can say is that these reductions have a global impact and represent a number of areas," Klebe said.

The company has confirmed it will be closing a facility in Wales, which employs roughly 200 workers.

Air Products' cost-cutting has helped earnings improve, Alexander said. The company has said the initial restructuring would save $50 million this year and $125 million in fiscal 2010. The latest cuts are expected to save $50 million annually beginning in 2011, the company said in a news release.

Air Products announced in December it expected to reduce staff by 1,300 in response to falling demand for its products, particularly gases used to make computer chips and flat-panel displays. The company upped that number to 1,400 in January.

The continuing recession has led to the latest round of cuts.

"The global recession remains challenging; however, we believe the actions we are taking to drive improvement in costs are positioning the company for continued margin improvement," Chief Executive Officer John McGlade said in a statement Wednesday.

The Air Products work force peaked this decade at 22,100 in 2007. The planned job reductions will bring the company's global work force under 20,000 for the first time since 2004.

Earnings for the quarter, which ended June 30, increased 61 percent to $113.2 million, or 53 cents per share, compared with the same quarter last year.

Income from continuing operations, however, fell 61 percent to $114.6 million, or 54 cents per share. And sales dropped 28 percent to $1.98 billion.

"While we are still seeing the impact of the global recession on our volumes, we have seen signs of improvement during this quarter in some of our end markets, particularly in electronics and Asia," McGlade said.

The Associated Press and Bloomberg News contributed to this story.

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