Laid off from Ericsson.

What Ericsson layoffs have meant for employees

Efficiency work would continue across Ericsson's group but wouldn't be announced separately, the company said in its January 2026 release on proposed Swedish cuts, a line that bears on its workers everywhere else. In the US the 2023 field-service layoffs were reported from an internal memo, which Inside Towers covered, and from a state filing in Texas that the Dallas Morning News wrote about. The company's regional numbers are broad as well, since its third-quarter report counts staff by market area and the Americas area takes in Latin America along with North America. If you work at an Ericsson site in the US, a memo and your state's WARN listing may tell you more about a cut there than any of those company-wide figures do.

Contractors were already doing more than 80% of Ericsson's US field work before that decision, according to the company's notice as the Morning News described it, and Ericsson had used them since its field-service business started in 2015. It said it would help affected workers connect with those providers to look for new jobs. The memo drew its line at field-based work done by Ericsson's own employees, and said site design, engineering, support and network optimization would carry on as before. An affected employee told Inside Towers that Ericsson was trying to get authorized contractors to pick up the climbers, while expecting trouble earning the same money or finding benefits as good. If one of those firms offers you work, the pay and the benefits are the two places that employee expected a gap, and both are fair to set beside what you earned at Ericsson.

Ericsson's North American workforce has been cut in pieces before. From December 2001 to March 2005 the company made dozens of Texas filings for Plano and Richardson, most for fewer than 25 jobs and some for a single person, sometimes several on one day for different Richardson sites, as our WARN tracker shows them. For anyone at those sites then, a filing usually covered a handful of people, and the median one lists four jobs. The whole company was shrinking at the time. Its North American headcount fell by more than half from the end of 2000 to the end of 2002, by our arithmetic on the year-end table in its 2002 annual report, though Ericsson's 2002 cuts included businesses it sold, and about 3,000 phone staff across the company moved into Sony Ericsson in 2001.

Ericsson's roughly $6 billion purchase of Vonage brought it a couple of thousand workers, according to Light Reading, whose own read in February 2023 was that the deal had probably left Ericsson with surplus staff, with some overlap in central services functions. No filing under Vonage's name appears in our tracker, before or after the purchase. On Ericsson's October 15, 2026 earnings call, in the transcript published by The Motley Fool, chief executive Per Narvinger said the target for Vonage's new head was to grow the business and, as Ericsson had made very clear, to look at its costs as well. If you work at Vonage, his remark spoke to the unit's costs in general terms rather than announcing job cuts.

If your Ericsson job was in Texas, where the North American business is based in Plano, the state's claim rules and benefit amounts are on Texas unemployment benefits. For a job in California, California unemployment benefits covers the same ground. If a package you're offered includes COBRA, how COBRA works covers what electing it costs and how long it can last.

A sourced history of Ericsson layoffs

• January 2026, about 1,600 positions in Sweden

  Ericsson proposed staff reductions in Sweden that could affect about 1,600 positions, its January 15 release said, and it had notified the Swedish Public Employment Service and opened negotiations with Swedish trade unions.

• July 2023, end of in-house US field services announced

  A People Operations memo set Sept. 29 as the separation date and moved all US field work to outside providers from Oct. 1, Inside Towers reported, and Ericsson told the Dallas Morning News the exit would cut more than 750 US jobs.

• February 2023, Ericsson confirms about 8,500 job cuts

  Ericsson confirmed, Light Reading reported, that about 8,500 roles would go, roughly 8% of its workforce, and expected most gone by summer. A later Light Reading story put the North American share at about 5 to 7% of some 12,000 employees.

• May 2005, San Diego CDMA unit headquarters to close

  Ericsson announced 250 US job cuts at its Mobile Systems CDMA unit, The Register reported, with the jobs going over six to nine months and the unit's San Diego headquarters set to close after that.

• 2002, group-wide restructuring and divestments

  Restructuring and divestments cut Ericsson's workforce 24% in 2002, to 64,600, according to its Form 20-F for 2002, with a goal of fewer than 60,000 by the end of 2003. North American staff went from 8,929 to 6,328 over the year.

What to do if you're laid off from Ericsson

• File for unemployment in the state where you worked. Benefits run from your filing date, and severance usually doesn't block you. Ericsson's biggest hubs: Texas, California. Somewhere else? Every state is here.
• Apply for financial and hardship assistance. Unemployment supplements income, but food benefits, health coverage and utility help are often available as well. Here's some of what Ericsson's hub states run: Texas, California, and every other state is here.
• Mind the health insurance window. Losing coverage opens a 60-day special enrollment period, and an ACA plan usually beats unsubsidized COBRA. Compare your options before the employer coverage lapses, and read how the COBRA clocks run if you are weighing it seriously.
• Get your real runway number. Severance plus savings divided by reality. The calculator takes five minutes.
• Know which clocks are already running. Severance review windows, COBRA election, visa grace periods, and 401(k) rollovers all run on federal deadlines that started at termination. All five deadlines are here.