Verizon planning its largest layoffs ever: Report

Verizon is planning to cut about 15,000 jobs in the telecommunications company’s largest-ever layoffs as part of a restructuring under its new CEO.

Reuters reported the looming layoffs on Thursday, citing an unnamed person familiar with the matter.

The job cuts will impact 15 percent of the US-based company’s workforce, and are set to take place as soon as next week, the person said.

A Verizon spokesperson declined to comment.

The cuts, following the appointment of former PayPal boss Dan Schulman as CEO in early October, are aimed at the company’s non-union management ranks and are expected to affect more than 20 percent of that workforce, one source said. Verizon also plans to transition around 180 corporate-owned retail stores into franchised operations, the source added.

The Wall Street Journal reported the cuts earlier.

Verizon is battling rising competition as subscriber growth slows and cautious consumers are unwilling to buy premium wireless plans. It has faced mounting pressure from rivals AT&T and T-Mobile as the wireless market in the United States matures.

Schulman said last month that Verizon understood it needs aggressive change, including “cost transformation, fundamentally restructuring our expense base”.

“We will be a simpler, leaner and scrappier business,” he added.

Schulman, a Verizon board member for seven years, has said he does not want to hike prices and seeks to be more customer-focused.

“Our financial growth has relied too heavily on price increases; a strategic approach that relies too much on price without subscriber growth is not a sustainable strategy,” he said last month.

Verizon had about 100,000 US employees at the end of 2024, after cutting almost 20,000 over three years. Last year, it announced a reduction of 4,800 employees through a voluntary programme and took a nearly $2bn charge. In 2018, Verizon said about 10,400 employees would leave under a prior voluntary exit programme.

Stop subscriber exits

Verizon maintains the highest price points in its telecommunications sector, a strategy that analysts have said is difficult to sustain amid rising competitive intensity.

Craig Moffett, senior analyst at MoffettNathanson, said the new CEO’s first commitment was to stop the bleeding from subscriber churn, which would require subsidising expensive handsets for a huge number of Verizon’s subscribers to keep them from leaving.

“The obvious question was how Verizon planned to pay for that. Now we know,” Moffett said. “What we don’t know is whether these cost reductions will actually help to offset the higher planned costs of retention” of customers.

In recent years, Verizon spent $52bn to acquire key wireless C-band spectrum in a 2021 auction and struck a $20bn deal to acquire Frontier Communications last year. It also spent $6bn to acquire prepaid mobile phone provider TracFone Wireless.