It’s going to be a rough holiday season for a lot of industry and tech workers, as communications and tech companies have announced layoffs. According to the hiring experts at Challenger, Gray, & Christmas, the layoffs announced in October were the largest in years. Employers have announced over 1 million job cuts through ten months of this year, already 44% higher than the job cuts for all of 2024.

Technology has the largest number of job cuts for the year, already at over 141,000. There are a number of different reasons for job cuts this year. In October, cost-cutting was the top reason for job cuts (50,437). AI was cited as the reason for 41,039 layoffs. Market and economic conditions were cited as the reason for 21,104 job cuts. The closing of stores and plants accounted for 16,739 cuts, and restructuring was the reason given for 7,588 job cuts.

Here are some of the cuts in the industry as reported by FierceNetworks:

AT&T didn’t announce any formal layoffs but it has still seen staff reduce by over 5,000 positions this year to reach 135,700. Many of the cuts are likely due to the new company policy of mandating that people return to the office five days per week.

Charter reduced staffing by 6,600 in 2024 to reach 94,500. The company recently announced it will be cutting 1,200 more jobs, plus it closed call centers in Ohio and Massachusetts.

Comcast seems poised to reduce staffing but hasn’t announced specific numbers. Rumors are that the company is getting ready to streamline operations.

T-Mobile originally said it was going to lay off the entire staff of 4,100 that came through the acquisition of UScellular. The company ultimately kept “more than half” of these employees.

Verizon actually increased staffing in 2025 and added 800 people this year. The company has been slashing staffing for many years. However, the company told investors when announcing third quarter earnings that it to intends reduce its costs. The Wall Street Journal reported, as I was publishing this blog, that the company plans to cut 15,000 people.  That’s before any impact from the upcoming acquisition of Frontier.

There are a lot of layoffs coming in other parts of the tech industry. Amazon laid off 14,000 people in October and says it will be cutting as many as 30,000 additional corporate jobs. Microsoft eliminated 9,000 positions recently, bringing it to 15,000 for the year. UPS has had the largest cuts with 48,000 jobs eliminated in 2025.