T-Mobile on Thursday announced it plans to lay off 5,000 employees, or around 7% of its total staff, over the next five weeks.
The reductions will largely affect corporate and back-office jobs that are “primarily duplicative” to other roles and will reduce the company’s middle management layers, CEO Mike Sievert said in a letter to employees Thursday. Retail and “consumer care” staff who work directly with customers will not be affected, he said.
“What it takes to attract and retain customers is materially more expensive than it was just a few quarters ago,” Sievert said.
T-Mobile’s cuts comes after months of mass layoff announcements at a range of other technology companies — including Microsoft and Meta — as firms grapple with an uncertain economic environment, CNN reports.
