Layoffs at Morgan Stanley may be announced this month and could claim 1,500 to 1,800 jobs, or about 3% to 4% of its work force, according to a person familiar with the investment bank’s plans.

Job cuts on Wall Street are as common now as big bonuses used to be. Morgan Stanley, which has endured a year of crisis management, shed about 7,000 positions in 2008 and is expecting to shed more jobs as soon as this month across a broad range of units.

The Wall Street Journal reported about possible job cuts at Morgan Stanley last week. Goldman Sachs Group and other investment banks also have been mulling further staffing cuts.

Morgan Stanley’s cuts wouldn’t include any moves in global wealth management, where the company’s brokers are getting ready to merge with Citigroup’s Smith Barney unit. Morgan Stanley has cut back especially deep in areas that used to take a lot of risk with the company’s balance sheet, a strategy that went out of fashion a few quarters after the housing market peaked.

For the people who support Morgan’s 8,400 brokers, the deal to create a new joint venture with Smith Barney will likely lead to job cuts. It also might bring retention payments for top-producing brokers, a common practice when retail brokerage forces merge. It is unclear whether such bonuses will be as generous as they were in past deals, when times were better on Wall Street.