AT&T to Eliminate 12,000 Jobs
By Alan Stewart Carl | Related entries in Business, Jobs, TechnologyAnother major U.S. company has announced upcoming layoffs. AT&T plans to eliminate 12,000 jobs, 4% of their workforce. But the layoffs are not all recession related. This is also about changing consumer habits:
The new cuts come as AT&T finds itself pulled by two currents at once. Not only is the recession leading businesses and consumers to curtail spending, but a long-term trend in the telecom industry is also at play: AT&T, which provides local phone coverage in California, Texas and 20 other states, has been seeing many customers defect from landline phones to wireless services. In the last quarter, AT&T’s basic voice lines in service dropped 11 percent. Its wireless customer base, meanwhile, grew 14 percent.
Most of the layoffs will come from those serving the landline business. AT&T actually expects to hire within its mobile business in 2009.
Recessions have a way of speeding along inevitable business changes. I think it’s been pretty clear for a couple of years that the age of the landline is on its way out. As people find ways to cut expenses during hard economic times, many will decide they don’t need a home phone and a mobile. That’s not good news for those working in the landline business but hopefully, as the economy rebounds, there will be new telecommunication jobs available. It’s not like Americans are going to stop communicating.
This entry was posted on Thursday, December 4th, 2008 and is filed under Business, Jobs, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
December 4th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
Obviously, they need bailed out, Alan. We should not be free-market morons about this, people are going to lose their jobs and it is governments responsibility to ensure that everyone who wants one, has a long-term, stress-free job until they die. People are not going to quit driving cars either, but we should certainly bail-out the automotive industry. We need to, as a country, abondon this flawed market-worship and simply nationalize the tele-com industry so this kind of thing doesn’t not hurt those who are not wealth. BTW, I don’t see any executives losing their jobs.
Did I leave anything out Jim S./Justin G.?
December 4th, 2008 at 12:56 pm
Job cuts are really out of control. The critical step now is to identify companies out there who are providing opportunities in these tough times. Here’s a pretty good site that specially unites these employers to save main street – http://www.jobstaxi.com/savemainstreet
All the best to everyone at AT&T.
December 4th, 2008 at 8:28 pm
Actual thought, J.Harden?
December 4th, 2008 at 8:45 pm
First of all, this is not your Mom & Dad’s AT&T, or “T” as its’ ticker symbol used to be. That Co. is long gone, swallowed up by one of it’s own Baby Bell spin-offs, SBC, who was a conglomerate of Bell South, Pac Bell and Southern Bell, if I remember correctly. So with all of that government intervention, the break-up of one of the countries greatest Co’s, we’ve come full circle and now have a few large phone service providers controlling the industry. Was it all worth it?
Well, we did get the diversity of services that was promised, with the mobile phone business growing so rapidly and, although competition didn’t develop too much for landline service, it’s made up for by the combination of the internet, PDA, and phone technologies finally gettin into the market.
Next is the fiber optics build-out, with infrastructure added every day, we’ll all be saturated in bandwidth before we know it. That may not have happened if the giant Ma Bell, with its’ landline business left intact, was able to control the future of the Telecom market. The downsizing is part of the free market evolution, as painful as it is, necessary for survival
Maybe the motto should be leaner is meaner? Maybe that’s what the U.S. Auto Industry needs to find out. The layoffs are gonna happen either way, but will they survive?
December 6th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
[...] it may be, signs point to Americans being in favor of bold action. Because at this point, the job losses are just getting too big and the threat of more price deflation means immediate measures need to be [...]