2026 89,900 -9.74%
2025 99,600 -5.50%
2024 105,400 -9.99%
2023 117,100 -1.10%
2022 118,400 -10.44%
2021 132,200 -2.07%
2020 135,000 -6.57%
2019 144,500 -7.01%
2018 155,400 -3.42%
2017 160,900 -9.45%
6 replies (most recent on top)
By offloading thousands of employees to HCLTech, Infosys, and international call centers, Verizon achieved a major accounting trick:
The Metric Shift: They removed billions of dollars from the "Salaries, Benefits, and Internal Headcount" column—the exact metric investors look at to calculate "Revenue per Employee"
The Reality: That money didn't disappear; it reappeared on the balance sheet under "Cost of Services" or "Vendor OPEX". This is exactly why Verizon's total Operating Expenses (OPEX) barely budged despite firing half their internal staff.
@dz no, it doesn't
Over the past decade, Verizon's annual revenue has remained nearly flat, growing by just $12.21 billion (9.69%) from $125.98 billion in 2016 to $138.19 billion in 2025.
In contrast, cumulative U.S. inflation grew by 38.75% over the same period, meaning Verizon's nominal revenue growth has significantly lagged behind inflation. (! no amount of exclamation marks is enough)
Bottom line: the business is doing sh-t, yet Verizon earns about the same revenue with a half of employees (even before AI) meaning in nominal terms, employee productivity nearly doubled, jumping by 77.13% between 2017 and 2025.
While individual employee productivity soared, total operating expenses only grew by 10.46% between 2017 and 2025 ($96.45 billion to $108.93 billion). This mirrors Verizon's nominal revenue growth of 9.65%.
So where is the dead weight?? Breaking news, C level and management was largely unaffected by the 40% headcount reduction
Any yet - revenue keeps growing. What work was really missed with the exits? It’s a hard truth, but they were right to get rid of so much dead weight.
And???? Your point is… ???
Don't forget contractors. Replace those fired employees with contractors to have the overall headcount (fulltime + contractors) working for VZ to be about the same as it was at the beginning of your list. The number of cell sites has ~doubled in that time period (same number of people working, just harder, with profits/benefits shared with fewer and fewer.
Wow !