TL;DRVerizon is laying off about 3,000 retail workers and transferring 274 corporate stores to independent owners under CEO Dan Schulman.
Verizon is cutting about 3,000 employees from its corporate-owned retail stores and transferring 274 locations to independent operators, Bloomberg reported on Thursday. The changes take effect on August 16 and will leave the largest US mobile carrier with 1,000 company-owned stores alongside roughly 5,000 independent franchises. A company spokesperson said many of the workers at the transferred stores are likely to be retained by the new owners, though they will no longer be on Verizon’s payroll.
The cuts are the third major round of layoffs under CEO Dan Schulman, who took the role in October 2025 after leading PayPal for nearly a decade. In November, Verizon eliminated 20 percent of its nonunion workforce, roughly 13,000 employees, as part of a campaign to cut $5 billion in operating expenses by the end of 2026. Hundreds more positions were cut in May.
Schulman has been direct about where he sees the savings going. In a June interview with Bloomberg, he said he expects artificial intelligence to replace “a large percentage” of customer service work, pointing to routine tasks like billing inquiries and account changes as especially vulnerable. Verizon has said its AI systems already produce satisfaction scores nearly 13 percent higher than human agents on comparable interactions.
