Verizon Communications is planning another round of layoffs this week, as the company seeks to reduce costs under its new CEO.
The nation's largest wireless carrier will announce the cuts on Thursday morning, according to an employee who was briefed on the plans. Barron's couldn't verify the number of employees that would be affected.
Verizon CEO Daniel Schulman has made cost savings a priority since he took the job last October. In November, Verizon cut 13,000 jobs, the company's largest ever layoff. It made a smaller wave of cuts this past May. At the end of 2025, Verizon had 89,900 employees.
During an earnings call in January, Schulman said Verizon was aiming to save $5 billion in operating expense in 2026. Schulman said at the time that a "substantial portion" of the savings would come from head count reductions among other areas.
Schulman told employees during an internal webcast on Dec. 5 that the recent layoffs had been inevitable. At the time, Schulman said that "if we don't have enough money to put back into our value proposition to customers, we are going to continue to shrink."
During that meeting, Schulman said customer satisfaction scores were "not great" adding that the company had lost market share over the last five years.
Last month, Verizon launched a flat-rate "Simplicity plan." Embedding artificial intelligence into customer interactions has also lowered costs and improved customer experience, Schulman said in April.
Verizon plans capital expenditure in the range of $16 billion to $16.5 billion this year, a decline from recent years.
Earlier this year, the company closed its roughly $20 billion acquisition of broadband provider Frontier Communications. The deal's regulatory approval came with a four-year protection against involuntarily layoffs for some Frontier employees.
Verizon is scheduled to report second-quarter earnings on July 24. During the first quarter, the company added a net 55,000 postpaid phone connections, beating investor expectations.
Verizon shares are up 9% this year on a total return basis, trailing the 10.5% return for the S&P 500.
Write to Karishma Vanjani at karishma.vanjani@dowjones.com
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July 14, 2026 13:27 ET (17:27 GMT)
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