#downsizing

March or later?

It’s going to be a massive restructuring followed by years of downsizing as more and more customers move to inexpensive and better quality AI tools. They are trying to squeeze as much as possible out of the sales force in Q1 and Q2 before they have a big layoff.

What does this mean for the future of the company ? Down 11% YoY is a lot, and missed analysts forecast of $3.5bn.

Should we expect layoffs? And where would those occur ?

Most of the layoffs are not in the big rounds, but are happening in small, quiet batches. Combine that with demotions and people quitting, and we've lost so many without any fanfare. The total number of people gone has to be massive. It's a coward's way to downsize.

AT&T and Verizon cut 17,700 jobs in 2025, with AI in its infancy
US telco giants AT&T and Verizon cut another 7% of their combined headcount last year as their decade-old downsizing programs continued.
Picture of Iain Morris
Iain Morris, International Editor, Light Reading
February 3, 2026

Verizon CEO Dan Schulman has moved quickly to cut more jobs since taking charge last October. (SOURCE: JORDI BOIXAREU)
Among those who chronicle the relentless depletion of the telecom workforce, all eyes were on Verizon and new boss Dan Schulman, who entered his new office in October and immediately erected a makeshift guillotine, promising the US telco's glum investors that 13,000 heads would soon roll. When results were published last week, as reported by Light Reading, they showed that 10,300 jobs had been cut from the total in the final three months of the year, leaving Verizon with 89,900 employees on New Year's Eve.

But across the whole year, there was almost as much carnage at close rival AT&T, which avoided the same scrutiny. For the first time in ages, Verizon's workforce grew slightly in early 2025 before Schulman replaced Hans Vestberg as CEO and launched his program of layoffs. This meant the net reduction in headcount for the full year was 9,700, according to Verizon's financial statements. Over the same period, AT&T eliminated about 8,000 jobs, finishing the year with 133,000 employees.

That total net loss of 17,700 jobs at AT&T and Verizon was equal to about 7% of the combined workforce at the end of 2024. This would not look so troubling for people in the US telecom sector had 2025 been a year in isolation, when operators were responding to short-term business hardship. Yet neither company suffered a collapse in sales or similar financial calamity, even if results were underwhelming.

AT&T's revenues increased by about 2.7% last year, to $125.6 billion. Verizon's were up 2.5%, to $138.2 billion. Those are uninspiring gains that just about mirror the US rate of inflation. Still to report its full-year results, T-Mobile US managed year-over-year sales growth of 7.5% for the first nine months of 2025.

The axman cometh

Sadly, last year's job losses were not an isolated event but the continuation of a decade-old trend that has gutted the telco workforce. At its high point for staff numbers in 2017, AT&T employed as many as 280,000 people, including those it would acquire with its $85 billion takeover of Time Warner. Around 147,000 jobs have subsequently disappeared, showing the workforce has more than halved in just eight years.

Much of this shrinkage was blamed on AT&T's ignominious retreat from a TV market that former CEO Randall Stephenson had judged critical to future growth. Eventually divested and now part of Warner Bros. Discovery, Time Warner proved to be one of the most disastrous deals in corporate history. AT&T's share price dropped more than a third during Stephenson's tenure between 2007 and 2020, although that didn't stop him from pocketing about $29 million in total compensation for his final year in charge.

AT&T's headcount, meanwhile, has continued to shrink. Since the end of 2022, the year it completed its Time Warner divestment, the operator has shed almost 30,000 jobs. There has been a similarly dramatic offloading of employees at Verizon. In 2017, it employed 155,400 people, some 65,400 more than the current total. Together, the two big telcos have slashed 212,500 jobs over this period, making them half the size they were less than ten years ago.

Inevitably, there is talk of automation and AI as factors in this downsizing. Predictive maintenance has reduced the need for truck rolls to repair faulty equipment. Much of what previously required an engineer's touch can now be handled by software programs running at underpopulated network operations centers. Even the most primitive chatbot seems likely to have had some impact on customer service roles. Retail jobs have been affected by the consumer preference for shopping online.

Nevertheless, what most people including senior telecom executives now mean when they say AI is the mutation that emerged with ChatGPT in late 2022. The companies today seen as integral to AI were attracting relatively little interest until that moment. Nvidia's share price fell about 46% in 2022 and was worth less than 8% of its current value at the end of the year. CEO Jensen Huang and other AI evangelists are now desperately trying to popularize the concept of artificial general intelligence (AGI), when machines are supposedly equal to or smarter than humans. Physical AI, describing intelligent robots, is the latest expression to seep from technology into telecom. The bosses of both Ericsson and Nokia have already used it this year.

What's unsettling for the average telco employee is that so many jobs were evidently superfluous even before the age of ChatGPT. Last year, Verizon generated $12.2 billion more in annual sales than it did in 2017 with about 60% of the workforce that it had back then. Accordingly, its annual revenues per employee have surged from around $811,000 to more than $1,537,000 over this period. AT&T's annual sales have fallen by nearly $35 billion in this timeframe, following its exit from some markets. But its headcount has clearly dropped at a much steeper rate. Its own revenues per employee rose from about $573,000 in 2017 to almost $945,000 last year.

One school of thought is that telcos have trimmed as much fat as they can. In much leaner shape, they will have to look to other areas outside the workforce for any future savings. Verizon, interestingly, has said it will reduce capital expenditure from about $17 billion in 2025 to between $16 billion and $16.5 billion this year. That is potentially bad news for suppliers such as Ericsson and Samsung, the vendors chiefly responsible for its 5G network, but perhaps not so worrying for employees.

Yet AI will be a major disappointment to investors if it does not allow operators to cut costs, grow sales or both. And meaningful sales growth seems unlikely. Customers pay operators for connectivity, not for the application it supports. They are probably not going to spend any more on connecting to an AI app than they would to watch YouTube or play games. At best, AI might help operators to tailor services for specific customers, improving loyalty and reducing churn.

The fear among employees will be that AI or AGI ultimately allows telcos to continue serving their millions of customers with just a skeleton crew, a small fraction of today's workforce. Software that writes software would seem to put many of today's desk-bound jobs in danger. With the arrival of physical AI, robots, not humans, might one day be scaling masts and digging trenches to repair or install equipment.

Regardless, for all the job cuts so far, profitability has not dramatically improved within numerous telcos. Verizon's adjusted margin for earnings (before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization), a preferred telco measure, was 36.2% last year, the same figure it reported for 2018.

Industry-wide operating costs have also remained stubbornly high in recent years. "Global opex only decreased by 0.2% in 2024, making us question if years of automation and, recently, developments in artificial intelligence are in real terms having any significant impact in telecom efficiency gains," said Dario Talmesio, global research director at Omdia (a Light Reading sister company), referring to a tracker that monitors opex levels across the telco industry.

Layoffs can initially be expensive, and some operators have resorted to heavier reliance on contractors as they have cut internal jobs, offsetting some of what they might save on staff wages. Labor costs, of course, also account for only a share of total operating expenses, previously reckoned by Moody's, the ratings agency, to be about 25% for the average European telco. Even a 10% reduction in staff numbers is likely to have only a minor effect on margins. But with so little prospect of sales growth, operators are eking out whatever gains they can.

https://www.lightreading.com/ai-machine-learning/at-t-and-verizon-cut-17-700-jobs-in-2025-with-ai-in-its-infancy

I believe in an effort to reduce costs they have now sold the offices to another company.
Whilst the office space was always too large, despite grand plans from the management team, selling and reducing footprint certainly sounds like a desperate measure. At least that’s what our competitors are saying to the customers.
Mono sales and team shrinking due to strong competition, beginning of the end before someone buys them.

Layoffs have started at LnW. Should be minimal at this point.

Preparations are underway getting Supervisors and contractors ready to step in if Unifor Local 975 Strikes as contract ended Dec 31 2025.

Crazy if they do as will give company more reasons to downsize Union Workers.

I am hearing rumor from reliable sources that CIB and CIB Risk will be huge this coming Tuesday.

Anyone have insight.

https://variety.com/2026/tv/news/cbs-evening-news-buyouts-bari-weiss-tony-dokoupil-1236643552/

Time to split

Any truth behind a previous post that claim that layoffs will commence the December 19,2025 - January 30,2026? We are entering the final 3 days of this supposed truth about when layoffs are happening and nothing major has happened. With the stock getting ready to dip below $40 is it possible layoffs could happen sometime soon?

"Some of you might ask if this is the beginning of a new rhythm – where we announce broad reductions every few months." Yes! Like all tech companies! Riffing, rhythm, what else? Hip hop? Agents?

https://www.livenowfox.com/news/2026-layoffs-list-companies-cutting-jobs-year

OnePlus faces severe challenges threatening its existence. Parent company OPPO may discontinue the OnePlus brand. The smartphone maker has experienced significant sales declines. It plans to withdraw from North American and European markets. Employee layoffs are expected across various teams.

https://news.ssbcrack.com/oneplus-faces-potential-market-exit-amid-declining-sales-and-layoffs/

Since the notorious 8/1 email, the stock is down 16%. In just the first month of this year, it’s already down 6%. That’s not volatility or bad luck, it’s sustained value destruction.

Billions lost on bad acquisitions, billions spent on buybacks at higher prices, rising operating costs from rigid RTO and unnecessary real estate, and now plans for even more capital intensive projects. None of it has produced better execution, stronger cash flow, or improved shareholder returns. The market sees it and has rejected it.

RTO didn’t create culture or discipline. It increased costs without creating value. You can’t talk your way into confidence or mandate your way into performance. Investors don’t reward slogans or control. They reward results. And the results, both in stock price and capital efficiency, are undeniable.

It seems like the beginning of a trainwreck.

Here it goes again for this company. Layoffs have happened this past week. They say never again and here we go again. More to come in these next six months. That lie about it not happening and it happened.

So what is your guess, is this gonna happen and how big it will be?

Inside Sales gutted Many at in the Clover Product Engineering and Operations got whacked it’s a slow downward spiral

How are we supposed to survive this?

Thing is, they lay off all your closest colleagues (various departments) until they ki-l off the business, leaving the few remaining staff overworked, disengaged and depressed. Then they say we can only recruit more people when we grow the business. And so the downward spiral continues (a bit like the share price).

Entire SDR segment including management in Louisville eliminated as of today. 1/15/26 10:30AM
Hearing several IOT/HSI/ANS teams gone nationwide as well.

CarMax is moving forward with large-scale layoffs that will hit its corporate workforce, particularly in the Richmond region. The job cuts represent a notable downsizing of the company’s corporate operations. Workers based in CarMax’s corporate offices near Richmond are bearing the brunt of these reductions as the company restructures and looks to control costs.

https://www.wtvr.com/news/local-news/carmax-layoffs-jan-14-2026

• Safeway
• Amentum
• Battelle
• Banner Health
• TeKnowledge
• Comcast
• AGC Biologics
• West Springs Hospital
• Nordstrom

https://www.westword.com/news/colorado-companies-most-employee-layoffs-2025-40827083/

It’s over

More layoffs

OPO employees having meeting with their manager seeming to gauge interest in leaving over the change. Are they making a list of who to let go due to “downsizing”?

Heard Highmark did some layoffs on Friday. Do not know the full extent of it but a few people from a team i work with were let go and I heard it was much more than that. Anyone have more information? Are further layoffs coming?

slowly fading away......

https://www.thelayoff.com/post/@OP+1ke9wcgvt

Anyone have info for the uhc side? Optum listed the dates

Yes there will be another round end of Q1. First round was timed perfectly before the end of the year. That being said, to balance the sheets, more cuts had to occur at the beginning of the year for faster turnaround times for revenue increasing strategies in place.

It is happening and will continue to trend the same patterns as the Q4 layoffs.

Lots of questions as to if it will be geo based like the first rounds were or if it will be more results based strategies for the target. The answer is both are being considered.

Agent companies have already been scouted for these locations. Some divestures will be March and then the rest in April.

One thing I did hear is if your location has black tile sales floors, that is is ideal for agent companies to transition (don’t ask why, I didn’t hear but it’s strategic placement)

In a meeting conducted yesterday, the following Optum 2026 Downsizing Notification Calendar was shared:

Notification Dates:
1/22/26
2/19/26
3/19/26
4/30/26

Term Dates:
2/5/26
3/5/26
4/2/26
5/14/16

It was not specified what areas of Optum would be impacted.

They can only close so many stores before there’s nothing left to cut. At the pace they’re going, having ten stores left in five years would feel like a miracle. This really looks like a slow death by a thousand cuts for Macy’s.

They did the humane thing and waited until after the break.

Good luck with your job searches in the new year. Take care all.

Model E will be hit the hardest. Too many people in that org. Lots of LL6 who have no reports. Their roles are scheduled to be axed.

Some parts of the government have been hit harder by mass firings and buyouts than others. The Partnership for Public Service found that just three agencies account for more than half of the total staff reductions in 2025: the Defense Department, which has lost more than 60,000 employees; the Treasury Department, which has lost more than 30,000; and the Department of Agriculture, which has lost more than 20,000.

https://time.com/7342386/trump-government-cuts-foreign-aid-health-climate-workers/

Yes, more layoffs are coming but not before new year... all signs point to January/February time frame. Its about time they do something about our decline! They should have leaned out a while back but didn't want to pay out people's packages so instead they tried to push people out or change people's job to create a scenario that would allow them to let people go without a cause.

Bumping this for info, the OP is @10d+1kbqefsjs.

It’s been a rough year for the Texas job market. Several industries have been hit hard by mass layoffs as corporate headquarters ditched the Lone Star State for greener pastures, sometimes leaving the United States all together.

https://www.mysanantonio.com/business/article/mass-layoffs-texas-21221197.php