Laid off from Nokia.

What Nokia layoffs have meant for employees

Nokia's company-wide cost plan didn't spread its savings evenly. Nokia's annual report to US regulators put 50 to 60 percent of the expected savings in Mobile Networks, about 30 percent in Cloud and Network Services and the last 10 to 20 percent across Network Infrastructure and the corporate center, and Light Reading has described the mobile side as where Nokia cut jobs most aggressively. If your work is in mobile, that's the part of the company this program leaned on hardest. Nokia struggled to cover its costs after losing important AT&T and Verizon contracts in the US from 2020 on, according to Light Reading's capital markets coverage. The same report described Nokia cutting its four business groups to two, network infrastructure and a new mobile infrastructure group. Nokia's annual report also says the plan's headcount figures leave out Infinera, which Nokia finished buying after the plan began, so if you came over in that deal, the plan's target wasn't set with your group in it.

The restructuring has since outgrown that plan. Of the 800 million euros in 2026 charges Nokia expected in July, 550 million was for its China operations and new programs mainly in Europe rather than the original plan, by our arithmetic from its second-quarter report. None of the reporting on record gives a US share of the plan's 14,000 cuts or of the newer programs, and Hotard, Nokia's chief executive, said on a July call with reporters that Nokia wouldn't "get into the headcount detail." If you work for Nokia in the US, the group figures show how big the effort is and which businesses it aimed at, while Nokia's own US cuts have reached state records through notices filed under its names.

Companies Nokia later bought filed 27 of the US notices matched to Nokia in our WARN tracker, namely Alcatel USA's in Plano, Lucent's at sites in Georgia, Illinois, Kansas and Texas, two from Alcatel-Lucent and Infinera's in Sunnyvale. Nokia's annual report calls Lucent Technologies a predecessor of Nokia of America Corporation, the subsidiary formerly known as Alcatel-Lucent USA, so Lucent's notices from 1998 to 2003 come from the same corporate line as Nokia of America's own. If you're reading the notices matched to Nokia for a sense of its own record, most of them tell you about those companies instead.

Naperville shows how many owners one US office can pass through. SDxCentral traced the office to Motorola Solutions' wireless equipment business, which the Nokia Siemens joint venture bought in 2011, and reported that some Alcatel-Lucent staff joined it after Nokia's 2016 purchase, with a Nokia spokesman placing the 2018 cuts there under the synergy program that followed that deal. By then DuPage County had spent $1.3 million enrolling about 140 former Nokia Naperville employees in job training, its workforce director said in an Associated Press report. If you're near Naperville, the county's workforce office has put former Nokia staff through training before, by that account. Claims filed in Illinois are covered on the Illinois unemployment page.

Fort Worth is where Nokia's own name appears earliest in our tracker, on notices from 2001 to 2005, before the handset logistics and repair center there was slated to close. That 2006 plan, as RCR Wireless described it, was to move part of the affected staff to Irving rather than lay them off. If your site's work is shifting to another Nokia location, a move can be one of the outcomes worth weighing, as one was planned for 150 people in Fort Worth. If you're leaving a Texas job instead, the Texas unemployment page covers claims there.

A sourced history of Nokia layoffs

• October 2026, 253 jobs at three Finnish sites

  Nokia announced it would eliminate 253 positions in Espoo, Tampere and Oulu, with cooperation negotiations starting October 12, according to Eurofound's restructuring monitor, under a cost program intended to make room for investment in defense, AI and data centers.

• July 2026, more restructuring in Europe and China

  Nokia raised its 2026 restructuring forecast to 800 million euros, with 200 million for new programs mainly in Europe and 350 million for China integration, its second-quarter report said; CEO Justin Hotard told Light Reading early retirement was under study.

• November 2025, cuts in Germany and France

  Nokia planned 300 German job cuts and a Munich closing by 2030 affecting 500 more, which IG Metall vowed to contest, according to Eurofound's Germany factsheet; in France, the France factsheet records 427 cuts through a collective voluntary termination agreement.

• October 2023, Nokia's company-wide cost savings program

  On October 19, 2023, Nokia set out to cut its cost base by 800 million to 1.2 billion euros by the end of 2026, expecting a workforce of 72,000 to 77,000, down from 86,000, its Form 20-F filing recounts.

• September 2018, Naperville office cuts

  About 100 more people were laid off at Nokia's Naperville office, county officials said in WGN's Associated Press story, bringing cuts there to about 300 over two years, in areas including research and development, regional sales and corporate administration.

• October 2006, Fort Worth handset logistics and repair closing

  Nokia planned to close its Fort Worth handset logistics and repair center and outsource the work, RCR Wireless reported, with 150 of the 450 affected workers to move to Irving and about 300 to be laid off.

What to do if you're laid off from Nokia

• File for unemployment in the state where you worked. Benefits run from your filing date, and severance usually doesn't block you. Nokia's biggest hubs: Texas, Illinois, 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 Nokia's hub states run: Texas, Illinois, 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.