Thursday, January 27, 2022

Telecom Employment Has Been Falling for Two Decades

Headcount reductions are nothing new for the world’s top-20 biggest connectivity providers over the past half decade. One also can note a longer-term trend as fixed network operations, in particular, need to be made more efficient to deal with declining revenues. 


source: Economic Policy Institute


 

source: Economic Policy Institute


But job cuts in the connectivity business have been occurring for 20 years. But sometimes the job cuts really are akin to outsourcing, where a firm shifts headcount to another entity. The net effect is lower headcount, but the jobs are not necessarily “lost.”


By selling assets, AT&T has significantly reduced headcount over the past year. 


Over the last four years, AT&T headcount has dropped by 77,400, largely driven by asset sales. 


About 12,000 employees were shifted when  DirecTV was sold to TPG, a private equity firm.


Another 12,240 jobs were shifted when AT&T  sold Vrio, a television business serving Latin America and the Caribbean, to investment company Grupo Werthein.


As Warner Media is merged with Discovery, possibly another 25,000 in headcount will be shifted. 


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