T-Mobile, which is owned by Deutsche Telekom, has been undergoing a reboot after Srini Gopalan became CEO in November amid customer retention struggles. Since then, the company has quietly been restructuring its workforce operations, resulting in an unexpected number of layoffs.
The company reportedly first laid off an unknown number of employees in December, including account executives and sales managers. The following month, it had pink-slipped more workers in departments such as consumer and retail, end-user support, sales, business and product.
T-Mobile continued job cuts in March and April, again affecting employees in various departments. The layoffs come after Gopalan announced plans during an earnings call in October to make the company digital-first by implementing a “digital transformation” to modernize its operations.
T-Mobile layoffs surpass 4,600 after customer losses
Amid this shift, Deutsche Telekom revealed in its second-quarter 2026 earnings report that T-Mobile’s U.S. headcount has declined by more than 4,600 since the end of 2025.
Specifically, T-Mobile had 70,036 U.S. employees on Dec. 31, which dropped to 65,365 by June 30, reflecting a 6.7% decrease.
Deutsche Telekom stated in the report that T-Mobile’s dwindling headcount was “primarily due to the impact of the 2025-2026 Workforce Transformation.”
While T-Mobile’s layoffs are taking place during a time when the company is undergoing a digital transformation, they also began rolling out after the carrier acquired UScellular’s wireless operations for $4.3 billion in August last year.
A few months before completing the acquisition, UScellular told regulators it would lay off employees but said T-Mobile would rehire most of them, according to a report from Fierce Network in April last year.
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However, in January, T-Mobile told TheStreet in an emailed statement that it has been cutting jobs to “respond even faster to a dynamic market.”
The carrier has been doubling down on reducing its postpaid phone churn (the percentage of postpaid phone customers who canceled their service), which hit 0.93% in 2025, up from 0.86% in 2024, amid intensifying competition in the wireless industry, according to its fourth-quarter 2026 earnings report.
While the carrier saw churn improve in the second quarter of this year, T-Mobile Chief Financial Officer Peter Osvaldik said during an earnings call in July that the company expects it to elevate again after it retired several older wireless plans in June.
As T-Mobile fights to attract and retain customers, it has reportedly been closing several authorized retail locations operated by independent third-party dealers, which has contributed to layoffs this year.
It has also been pushing customers and employees to use its T-Life app to handle phone upgrades, new line additions, payment arrangements, and other crucial account changes, reflecting its ongoing digital transformation aimed at better serving customers.
“Our T-Life transformation is, at the highest order, about perfecting the customer experience and modernizing ways of serving customers and finally graduating those old worn out 1990s legacy systems,” wrote T-Mobile Chief Operating Officer Jon Freier in a memo to employees in May. “If we’re not driving a better customer experience with T-Life, we’re off-mission.”
T-Mobile follows a growing U.S. workforce shift
T-Mobile isn’t the only telecommunications giant that has recently shrunken its workforce. In June, AT&T reportedly cut jobs across multiple departments.
In July, Verizon revealed plans to lay off over 3,000 workers and sell 274 stores in August, affecting retail employees and 500 corporate workers. This change came after it cut hundreds of jobs nationwide in May and laid off over 13,000 employees in November.
Charter Communications’ Spectrum has also conducted multiple rounds of layoffs in recent months as it battles to reverse mounting customer losses in its internet and cable TV businesses.
The technology industry has been ramping up job cuts this year as more companies invest in artificial intelligence to enhance their operations.
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In July, the tech industry announced 9,867 job cuts, bringing the total this year to 149,023, a 67% increase from the 89,251 layoffs announced in this sector through July 2025, according to recent data from Challenger, Gray & Christmas. The tech industry now accounts for 31% of all job cuts announced this year.
“Tech remains the center of gravity for this year’s cuts, and AI is still the reason companies give,” said Andy Challenger, workplace expert and chief revenue officer for Challenger, Gray & Christmas, in a press release.
In the telecommunications sector, 1,064 job cuts were announced in July, bringing the total to 3,333 this year.
Roger Entner, a lead analyst at Recon Analytics, warned in a Fierce Network report in April last year that telecom companies are relying more heavily on automation as they expand their 5G promises to consumers, which is contributing to job cuts.
“Companies are trying to get more efficient in what they do,” said Entner. “More efficiency means fewer people.”
“The promise of 5G has been automation,” he continued. “Automation means fewer people. Most of the reduction in force has been on the operations side of the business.”
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