The Wall Street log reports T-Mobile’s engineering and network operations teams are facing waves of layoffs, including managers and executives, on top of thousands of jobs eliminated by restructuring after the company merged with Sprint in 2020. T-Mobile executives then promised that the merger was “all about creating new, high-quality, high-paying jobs, and the new T-Mobile will be job positive from day one and every day after that.”
In April 2020, the companies together had about 80,000 employees; however, like the log points out that T-Mobile’s most recent annual report (pdf) said it ended 2021 with 75,000 full- and part-time employees.
Staff members
As of December 31, 2021, we employed approximately 75,000 full-time and part-time employees, including network, retail, administrative and customer support roles.
A company spokesperson told the news that the layoffs “were part of the ongoing organizational shifts of recent months” without saying exactly how many jobs have been eliminated or whether there will be more layoffs in the future.
T-Mobile said the company would employ at least 11,000 additional workers by 2024 after the merger, but so far it appears that the exact opposite is happening. Shortly after the merger, T-Mobile announced a layoff plan that would affect “hundreds” of former Sprint employees. Since then, T-Mobile has disbanded Sprint’s LTE network and switched its Sprint customers to T-Mobile as the company plans to use its wealth of PCS spectrum to broadcast cellular signals from satellites.
Meanwhile, the Dish Network Genesis 5G service that was supposed to bring new competition is still hard to find. Elsewhere in the industry, other carriers have also faced layoffs. Early August, CNET reported that T-Mobile together with with its competitor Verizon reported that they were firing employees to meet business needs.