U.S. telecom networks are faster and more ubiquitous than ever, but the telecom work force is smaller than ever.
According to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, employment in the U.S. telecommunications subsector peaked in March 2001 with nearly 1.5 million employees. Since then, the number has steadily declined, dropping to 674,500 as of preliminary data for November. Looking at just the wireless subsector, jobs with wireless telecom carriers, excluding satellite, topped the 200,000 mark in the early and mid-2000s. But they began falling in 2008 and now number just 102,400, as of October, the most recent month available for the subsector.
The declines have come despite massive network buildouts, especially in the wireless industry, where carriers have rolled out 3G, 4G and now 5G networks. The wireless industry says these rollouts have created millions of jobs, with 4G alone estimated to have added 16.7 million new jobs over a decade, according to a recent study from the CTIA wireless industry group. Experts say the discrepancy between the government's jobs figures and the industry's shows how the wireless business has evolved, both in terms of competition and innovation.
"BLS looks at if are you employed directly with a mobile operator," said Recon Analytics analyst Roger Entner, whose research focuses on the wireless experience. By contrast, he said the industry's 4G estimate, which Recon Analytics helped produce, counted all the jobs that have been enabled by wireless.
"The mobile industry is not just connectivity anymore," he said, noting that the mobile industry now includes device hardware, mobile advertising, app development and content industries.
"These jobs have become the very core of wireless, and that's where the numbers are getting bigger," Entner said.
Of CTIA's 16.7 million estimated new jobs from 4G, the bulk — more than 11 million — were indirectly reliant on the wireless industry.
Of those indirect jobs, "8.7 million people participate in the on-demand economy, a new sector built completely on the sophistication of smartphones, and increased capacity, availability, and adoption of 4G networks," CTIA said.
But competition experts note that while innovation in the wireless space may have created new jobs, consolidation in the industry has killed them.
The wireless industry saw a massive wave of M&A between 2000 and 2020. Looking at just a partial list, AT&T Inc. combined with Cingular, Dobson, Atlantic TeleNetwork and Leap; Verizon Communications Inc. acquired Alltel, Rural Cellular Corp. and SureWest; Sprint combined with Nextel, iPCS and Clearwire; and most recently, Sprint finally merged with T-Mobile US Inc.
Sandeep Vaheesan — legal director at the Open Markets Institute, a research and advocacy organization focused on antitrust issues — said that in the highly saturated wireless market, it is easier for a company to grow through acquisitions than through organic growth.
Whereas organic growth generally results in increased employment as companies seek to expand their footprint or product offerings, Vaheesan said, "consolidation, on the other hand, usually leads to large-scale job losses" as companies seek to eliminate redundancies.
T-Mobile, for instance, made headlines this summer for reportedly laying off hundreds of former Sprint employees in Kansas City. The move came months after the completion of the merger between T-Mobile and Sprint.
"Acquisitions are an important and underrated part of why telecom employs fewer people than it did," Vaheesan said.
More recently, beyond consolidation, the COVID-19 pandemic has also driven job losses in the telecom sector. AT&T, for instance, plans to close 320 company-owned AT&T Mobility retail stores in November and December, according to the Communications Workers of America, the largest communications and media labor union in the U.S.
The closures stand to impact 1,600 workers, the union said. These closures are in addition to 250 stores that AT&T shuttered earlier this year. The company has attributed the store closures to changing customer behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic.
