In the midst of a deteriorating advertising climate, The New York Times plans to eliminate up to 20 newsroom positions and seek additional savings in the business units, the company said Thursday.

The reductions, described by the New York Times Company as a rebalancing, were announced to employees on Thursday morning. The company will seek volunteers for buyouts in The Times newsroom, Jill Abramson, the paper’s executive editor, said in a memo to the staff, adding that no newsroom employee would be laid off. She said there would be “fewer than 20” buyouts.

The Times will also seek to cut costs on the business side by eliminating positions that are vacant and by offering a limited number of buyouts, said an executive who insisted on anonymity because the company was not commenting publicly on the details or scale of the reductions.

Analysts are likely to link the cuts to the Times Company’s third-quarter earnings, which will be reported on Oct. 20 and which are expected to be relatively weak. Late last month, the company’s chief executive, Janet Robinson, told analysts, “Economic conditions have been getting more difficult since the second quarter.”

Thursday’s announcement marks the first significant staff reduction at the company since late 2009, when about 100 of the newsroom’s 1,250 jobs were eliminated through a combination of buyouts and layoffs. Since then the newsroom has added some jobs, primarily for Web reporting and producing.

Unlike in 2009, when all newsroom employees received buyout packages in the mail, newsroom employees will be alerted to the availability of buyouts and will have to request the information.

The business units of The Times have experienced far more severe cuts than the newsroom has in recent years, though there have only been a small number of buyouts since 2009.

Like other media companies that own newspapers, the Times Company has strived for several years to reduce the number of staff members for print products and add employees for digital offerings like Web sites and mobile apps. Accordingly, newsroom employees who are covered under the union’s digital contract will not be eligible for the buyout, but employees who are covered by the union’s print contract will be eligible.

“This is part of our continuing efforts to rebalance our business and news operations and strategically invest in hiring to support new digital initiatives and expand our presence around the world,” said a company spokeswoman, Eileen Murphy.

The company said it would seek to complete the staff reduction by the end of the year.

The cuts come at a time when media companies are feeling the pressure of a stagnating economy. Over the summer, the Times Company had anticipated a roughly 4 percent decrease in advertising revenue in the third quarter, in line with the second quarter. But Ms. Robinson said last month that the company now expected to report a roughly 8 percent decline. Notably, online ad revenue is expected to drop about 2 to 3 percent, after rising 2.6 percent in the second quarter.