Trump Says Sprint Bringing 5,000 Jobs Back to U.S.
Telecommunications company says most of the jobs will be new sales positions and call center agents
By Peter Nicholas and Ryan Knutson Updated Dec. 28, 2016 7:20 p.m. ET
President-elect Donald Trump speaks to reporters Wednesday in Palm Beach, Fla. ENLARGE
President-elect Donald Trump speaks to reporters Wednesday in Palm Beach, Fla. Photo: Evan Vucci/Associated Press
President-elect Donald Trump said Wednesday Sprint Corp. will move thousands of jobs back to the U.S.—a development he suggested was triggered by the “spirit and the hope” surrounding his election.
In a brief statement to reporters outside his home in Palm Beach, Fla., Mr. Trump said Sprint executives phoned him and told him they are “going to be bringing 5,000 jobs back to the United States. They have taken them from other countries.”
Sprint, which had 30,000 employees at the end of last year, said the jobs would mostly come from new sales positions and call center agents managed by overseas vendors. It said it would immediately start talking with states and cities to find the right location in the U.S. and that the positions would be in place by the end of March 2018. Sprint doesn’t have any employees outside of the U.S.
Earlier this month, SoftBank Group Corp. Chief Executive Masayoshi Son, the billionaire who controls Sprint, met with the president-elect at Trump Tower in New York at which time he said he would invest $50 billion in the U.S. and create 50,000 new jobs. The jobs announced today are part of that pledge.
Some of the Sprint jobs announced Wednesday were already in motion before the election. The carrier has been adding stores around the country and hiring new employees for those locations. The $50 billion investment is part of a previously announced $100 billion fund SoftBank is establishing with investors from Saudi Arabia and elsewhere.
As he prepares to take office on Jan. 20, Mr. Trump has been pointing to signs that investors and consumers are welcoming his presidency. He has also been actively cajoling and arm twisting companies to keep jobs in the U.S., including United Technologies’ Carrier business which agreed to keep a factory open in Indiana and stop some jobs from moving to Mexico.
Earlier on Wednesday he tweeted that the U.S. consumer confidence index was rising. On Monday, he tweeted that “the world was gloomy before I won” and that the stock market has been rising and consumer spending increasing ever since.
Sprint’s move to curry favor with the incoming administration follows a tougher time with the current telecommunications regulators. In 2014, Sprint tried to persuade regulators to let it merge with smaller rival T-Mobile US Inc. But Tom Wheeler, head of the Federal Communications Commission, favored more competition in the wireless market, and pressured Mr. Son to drop the plan, which he eventually did.
Wall Street analysts and bankers anticipate the Trump administration will be more favorable for consolidation.
The announcement came after Mr. Trump spoke over the phone with Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure.
“We are excited to work with President-elect Trump and his administration to do our part to drive economic growth and create jobs in the U.S.,” Mr. Claure said in a statement.
Sprint has been cutting costs and jobs in the U.S. as it copes with a heavy debt load and a highly competitive wireless environment where it has fallen to the fourth-largest carrier by subscribers overtaken by T-Mobile.
In recent years it has closed a number of facilities including call centers in the U.S. and moved the work to overseas vendors. Last year, it laid off about 2,500 people, according to a spokesman.
The 5,000 new workers will be a mix of Sprint employees and those hired by third-party vendors, the spokesman said. Relying on U.S.-based call center agents is more expensive, but the company aims to reduce total costs by cutting from other areas, the spokesman said.
Mr. Trump also said a new company called OneWeb will be hiring 3,000 people—“so that is very exciting.”
SoftBank announced last week a $1 billion investment in OneWeb, a satellite internet startup. At that time, it said the investment would create 3,000 engineering, manufacturing and support jobs in the U.S.
Write to Peter Nicholas at
peter.nicholas@wsj.com and Ryan Knutson at
ryan.knutson@wsj.com