Back in April 2019, nearly one year before T-Mobile closed on its $26.5 billion acquisition of Sprint, John Legere, then the CEO of T-Mobile, reiterated a promise that he made. Legere said that the transaction would be "jobs-positive" from day one. On the other hand, the Communication Workers of America (CWA) sad that 28,000 workers would lose their jobs after the deal was completed.
T-Mobile promised that the acquisition of Sprint would be "jobs-positive"
Going back even longer, to 2018, T-Mobile said that after the merger, it would have a head count greater than the pre-merger numbers of T-Mobile and Sprint combined. Yet, the day the deal was announced, T-Mobile talked about identifying $43 billion in synergies which is a figure that might be hard to reach without laying off employees with duplicate jobs. Years later, we can tell you that the CWA's warning was overblown as 28,000 pink slips weren't handed out. On the other hand, T-Mobile's promise that the deal would be "jobs-positive" also has yet to pan out.
Will T-Mobile add more jobs in the near future?
No way. With the transition to digital, jobs will be cut.
100%
Eventually, the carrier will need to hire more people.
Overall, T-Mobile has laid-off employees since the acquisition of Sprint
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings and quarterly earnings reports from T-Mobile parent Deutsche Telekom reveal that in 2019, while the parties were trying to negotiate regulatory approval from the FCC and the DOJ, T-Mobile had 53,000 full and part-time employees compared to 27,000 who were working for Sprint at the time. The combined 80,000 headcount was reduced to 75,000 a year later. By the tine 2023 arrived, there were 67,000 people working for the new company, a decline of 13,000 workers or 16% since the acquisition closed.
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Former T-Mobile CEOs Mike Sievert and John Legere. | Image credit-T-Mobile
The numbers also showed that despite the huge drop in full-time employees, T-Mobile had actually added to the number of part-time employees since the merger became official. Last year, T-Mobile added 3,000 employees and Deutsche Telekom reported an increase of nearly 2,500 in the number of employees it added in the U.S. In last year's annual report, Deutsche Telekom wrote, ""The number of full-time equivalent employees in the United States operating segment increased by 4.0% compared to December 31, 2023, primarily due to an increase in retail employees to support T-Mobile US' growing customer base."
And Deutsche Telekom continues to add employees in the U.S. At the end of September of this year, the telecom giant had 70,989 full-time U.S. employees, 5,835 or 9% more than it employed at the end of December 2024. But instead of attributing this gain to T-Mobile's growing customer base in the U.S., two smaller acquisitions in the advertising tech industry (Vistar Media and Blis) and one larger purchase in wireless (UScellular) were behind the increase in headcount.
The potential for job growth in the wireless industry is poor
Despite these acquisitions, Deutsche Telekom's full-time employment count in the U.S., at the end of this past September, was still 5,100 less than the figure the company had listed for its full-time employment number in 2020, right after buying Sprint. Falling employment figures among wireless providers isn't rare. Recently, after announcing a new CEO, Verizon said that it was going to layoff 13,000. This cut comes after Verizon had already eliminated 32,000 jobs since 2020.
As for AT&T, the nation's third-largest wireless carrier has reduced its headcount by a whopping 95,000 employees during the same period. And with concerns that AI is going to take over human jobs, the outlook for job growth in the industry is bearish. Throw in T-Mobile's transition away from retail stores and human reps, and things look even bleaker.
Even though T-Mobile failed to stick to its promise about the Sprint acquisition leading to job growth, things could have been worse had the transaction not been approved. Sprint's business was failing, and many more Sprint employees might have lost their jobs. Remember, T-Mobile didn't acquire Sprint for its wireless operations. It wanted Sprint's hoard of 2.5GHz mid-band spectrum, which the carrier already identified as a key puzzle piece toward its goal of 5G leadership in the U.S.
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Alan, an ardent smartphone enthusiast and a veteran writer at PhoneArena since 2009, has witnessed and chronicled the transformative years of mobile technology. Owning iconic phones from the original iPhone to the iPhone 15 Pro Max, he has seen smartphones evolve into a global phenomenon. Beyond smartphones, Alan has covered the emergence of tablets, smartwatches, and smart speakers.
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