British education publisher Pearson unveiled plans to axe 4,000 jobs, or 10 percent of its global workforce, in an effort to combat weak demand.Pearson, which last year sold the Financial Times business daily and a 50-percent stake in The Economist Group to focus on education, announced the radical restructuring in a trading update.The firm hopes to implement the "majority" of the 4,000 job cutbacks by the middle of this year, completing the cull by the end of 2017.The publisher - which will post official annual results on Feb. 26 - expects underlying operating profits of about 720 million pounds ($1.02 billion) in 2015. And it warned that profits were set to slide further in 2016, to between 580 million pounds and 620 million pounds, before restructuring costs.