Verizon To Sell 274 Retail Locations, Lay Off 500 Office Workers

Verizon is shrinking its corporate-owned retail footprint and laying off roughly 500 office employees, a year after it kicked off a broader corporate restructuring.

Verizon is selling 274 stores in a move that will impact roughly 2,500 retail employees, the wireless carrier said in a Thursday note to staff obtained by Reuters. The 500 office layoffs mark at least the third round of job cuts at Verizon in the last year. 

The divestiture will leave it with 1,000 stores and another 5,000 franchised outlets. Management at the company said it will need at least 1,000 corporate-owned stores over the next three years to execute its long-term strategy, according to the memo, which was also reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The corporate team is also working with the franchise operators “to elevate the experience,” according to the memo, Reuters reported. 

Verizon didn’t respond to a request for comment Friday morning.

The firm executed the largest round of layoffs in its history in November, eliminating 13,000 roles as part of a corporate reorientation that was focused “around delivering for and delighting our customers,” Verizon CEO Dan Schulman told staff in a memo at the time, which was just a month after he took the job. 

Its headcount was 89,000 full-time employees at the end of 2025, down from the nearly 100,000 staff it had a year prior, according to annual filings. It also sold 179 other corporate-owned locations and closed one retail store as part of the restructuring last year. The majority of Verizon’s stores are operated by six large franchisees, according to Reuters.

Verizon also took steps to cut its office real estate overhead last year, signing a 203K SF lease at Vornado Realty Trust’s Penn 2 tower in Manhattan last July that consolidated two other New York offices with roughly 1,000 staff. 

Earlier in the year, it sold the 145K SF headquarters of its TracFone Wireless subsidiary and relocated it to 51K SF in a business park near Miami International Airport. 

In the first quarter, Verizon pulled in $5.1B in profit, up 3.3% from a year earlier, and repurchased $2.5B worth of stock. The wireless carrier’s shares are up nearly 10% this year. It will post second-quarter results July 26.

It isn’t clear what impact the divestiture will have on the remaining 274 locations and their staff, but retailers have broadly proven to be resilient this year in the face of rising prices and uncertainty driven by the U.S. war with Iran.

Retail vacancy was essentially flat quarter-over-quarter at 6%, well below the 7.4% historical average, according to Cushman & Wakefield.

The sector has been buoyed by limited new construction, which has held back availability rates even as bankruptcies ripple across the landscape. Most recently, the parent company of Saks Fifth Avenue declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy and emerged in June with fewer stores and a strictly luxury focus.