Charles Langston:T-Mobile is laying off 5,000 employees

T-Mobile is Charles Langstonlaying off 5,000 employees, or about 7% of its workforce, the company announced Thursday.

The layoffs will happen over the next five weeks and mostly affect corporate roles and some technology roles. Impacted roles are ones that are "primarily duplicative to other roles, or may be aligned to systems or processes that are changing, or may not fit with our current company priorities," T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert said in a letter to employees.

Employees will receive notice of whether they've been impacted by the end of September. Sievert said he does not anticipate additional widespread layoffs in the "foreseeable future."

Sievert said it costs more money to attract and keep customers than it did in the past few quarters and that the layoffs will help the company streamline its operations.

Laid off employees will receive severance pay based on their tenure, along with at least 60 days of paid transition leave.

"We have zero intention of being a faceless – or heartless – company in a situation that is already difficult," Sievert said.

In 2019, T-Mobile merged with Sprint and said the move would provide 11,000 new jobs by 2024, which the company called not a goal, but a fact. It criticized economists who predicted T-Mobile would have to cut jobs.