Verizon’s announcement that it will eliminate more than 13,000 jobs—the largest mass layoff in the company’s history—has triggered shock, anger and anxiety among telecommunications workers and across wide layers of the working class. The cuts, first reported by the Wall Street Journal last week and confirmed in a company-wide memo from new CEO Dan Schulman Thursday, amount to roughly one-fifth of Verizon’s management workforce and come as the company claims it must “reorient” its business and “simplify operations” in the name of “improving customer experience.”
The real motive is not customer satisfaction but Wall Street’s satisfaction. Verizon posted nearly $5 billion in profit in the third quarter alone and is aggressively restructuring to boost its stock price, slash labor costs and prepare for intensified competition in wireless, home internet and enterprise services. Schulman, who took over only last month, declared that Verizon had reached a “critical inflection point” and announced an “aggressive transformation” of the business—corporate language that workers immediately understand as synonymous with firings, outsourcing and speedup.
The Verizon cuts come as new, long-delayed jobs data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) expose the underlying weakness of the US labor market and contradict claims by the Trump administration and the media of a strong economy. The September employment report, held back for seven weeks by the government shutdown, shows anemic job growth, rising jobless rates, slowing wage gains and significant job losses in key productive sectors, such as manufacturing, warehousing and logistics.
On Reddit and thelayoff.com, Verizon employees have flooded forums with reports of entire departments being eliminated and hundreds of retail stores divested or closed. Many describe scenes of stunned silence during mass conference calls where entire teams were informed they no longer had jobs. One worker wrote, “Emotionally draining day … my friends were cut and it just feels like a death. NO ONE deserves to be without a job right before Christmas.” Another technician commented: “They’re ditching field techs in favor of contracting out to companies so they don’t have to pay salaries, benefits, taxes, etc. Going to start seeing cell towers being fixed with duct tape.”
Workers reported that roughly 180 stores were hit in a single day, with about 179 slated for divestment. Retail districts are being consolidated nationwide. “Territories and districts will be redrawn and that will cause impacts to local retail ops,” one poster explained. “I called my mortgage company already. I don’t know what else to do.”
Some workers noted that the layoffs will not be confined to the US. One Reddit commenter reported: “India is going to be impacted too. Thirteen thousand across US and India.” Workers expressed outrage that a company reporting strong profits would simultaneously slash thousands of jobs on multiple continents.
Across the forums, employees denounced the company’s claim that the cuts are meant to “simplify operations” or “improve customer experience.” One wrote: “Verizon layoffs have nothing to do with AI. It’s only about increasing the stock price.” Another pointed to the insulting severance packages: “The severance pay is honestly so insulting,” the worker noted, adding that it amounted to only two weeks of pay per year of service. Another summed up the broader mood: “Every Fortune 500 company is this greedy. No one cares about the working class.”
The long-delayed BLS report provides only a glimpse of the economic insecurity that tens of millions are facing as the economy slides towards a potential recession. The US officially added 119,000 jobs in September, a number the media described as “stronger than expected,” but the underlying details make clear that the labor market was already faltering before the shutdown. Gains were concentrated in low-paid, overstretched sectors—healthcare, restaurants and social assistance—while critical productive industries continued to shrink. Manufacturing lost 6,000 jobs in September, extending a months-long decline. Transportation and warehousing lost 25,300 jobs, reflecting a contraction in logistics following massive cuts at UPS, Amazon and warehouses throughout the country.
The official unemployment rate rose from 4.3 to 4.4 percent as 450,000 people entered or re-entered the labor force and could not find work. Wage growth slowed, leaving workers increasingly unable to keep up with housing costs, food prices and basic expenses.
The six-week blackout of official labor data only obscures the worsening reality. According to the Cleveland Federal Reserve, 39,000 workers received formal layoff notices in October—a level seen earlier this year only in May and, before that, only during acute periods of crisis. In the past several weeks, Amazon, General Motors, IBM, Microsoft, Paramount, Target, UPS and other major corporations have all announced plans to eliminate tens of thousands of jobs. Verizon’s 13,000-job assault is merely the latest and most visible expression of a rapidly widening corporate job-cutting campaign.
These events intersect with the broader wave of layoffs reported by Challenger, Gray & Christmas. In October alone, US-based employers announced 153,074 cuts, up 175 percent from last October. Through the first 10 months of 2025, companies have announced 1,099,500 layoffs—a 65 percent increase from last year and the highest figure for this point in the year since the mass pandemic layoffs of 2020.
Technology companies lead the way, driven by restructuring around automation and AI, with more than 141,000 job cuts announced this year. Warehousing recorded nearly 48,000 cuts in October alone, as companies unwind pandemic-era expansion and automate operations. Retailers have slashed more than 88,000 jobs so far in 2025—an increase of 145 percent over last year—as chains shut stores and funnel resources into online operations built on low-wage, precarious labor.
Cost-cutting was the reason cited for more than 50,000 of October’s layoffs. AI-driven restructuring accounted for another 30,000. At the same time, planned hiring has collapsed to its lowest level since 2011.
Michigan’s Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) filings show the devastation in a single state. In recent weeks alone: Dana Thermal Products is closing its Auburn Hills facility, destroying 200 jobs; XALT Energy is shutting down operations in Midland and Auburn Hills, eliminating 134 jobs; Freudenberg Battery Power Systems is closing plants in both Auburn Hills and Midland, cutting 190 jobs; the Taubman Company is closing its Bloomfield Hills headquarters, wiping out 105 positions; Avancez is laying off 143 workers in Hazel Park; IAC is cutting 68 jobs in Alma and 178 in Mendon; Oakland Stamping is closing its Detroit plant, cutting 133 jobs; Cole’s Quality Foods is closing its Muskegon plant, eliminating 175 jobs; Spirit Airlines is temporarily laying off 103 workers; Vista Maria is laying off 154 workers in Dearborn Heights; and Anderton Machining is closing its Jackson facility, cutting 41 jobs.
Similar closures and layoffs are occurring across every major industrial region of the United States. The Philadelphia Housing Authority is firing more than 300 union trades workers and will now contract out repairs “as needed.” Providence Swedish and Providence Oregon are cutting hundreds of hospital workers—including cleaners, technicians and essential non-clinical staff—while demanding more exhausting workloads from those who remain.
Corporations, politicians and the media describe these layoffs as a “market correction,” an adjustment to “consumer trends” or “efficiency gains” from AI. In reality, they reflect the deepening crisis of American capitalism. Corporate profits remain at historic highs, yet employers insist they cannot afford workers while funneling billions into share buybacks, dividends and automation designed to eliminate jobs entirely. The Trump administration’s escalating tariffs, combined with austerity at every level of government, have only intensified these pressures.
This is an international crisis with mass layoffs spreading in Germany and Europe and throughout the world.
Verizon workers, autoworkers, logistics employees, healthcare workers, educators, retail workers and public sector employees in the US and around the world face a common enemy: a corporate-financial oligarchy determined to protect profits by destroying jobs and driving down wages.
The unions—including the Communications Workers of America, Service Employees International Union, the United Steelworkers, the United Auto Workers and others—offer no strategy to oppose this onslaught. Instead, they seek to divide American workers from their international brothers through the promotion of economic nationalism and demand concessions in the name of “saving jobs,” even as plants and departments are wiped out one after another.
The accelerating jobs massacre is a conscious policy of the capitalist class and its political servants. It can be halted only through a unified, international counteroffensive of the working class, built through the formation of independent rank-and-file committees in every workplace. Only through collective struggle for a socialist alternative can workers defend their livelihoods and put an end to a system that sacrifices millions of jobs for the enrichment of a tiny elite.