After it laid off 1,500 workers in April, Qualcomm has filed a new Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) to lay off approximately 300 more employees. The numbers are 61 employees in San Diego and 241 in North Carolina, according to a report from the San Diego Union-Tribune.
Qualcomm announced it was cutting jobs in April 2018, according to Bloomberg, to save $1 billion. At that point, Qualcomm filed a WARN to lay off 1,231 in San Diego, 169 in San Jose, and 100 in Santa Clara, California. In May, the company added 44 more layoffs in San Diego. With this new set of layoffs, Qualcomm has eliminated 1,846 jobs this year.
Whether the additional layoffs are in any way related to Trumpian trade wars remains to be seen — ZTE, which was the subject of an export ban that may or may not be lifted and which essentially shut down its operations in recent months as a result, is a Qualcomm customer. RCR Wireless News has reached out to Qualcomm for comment.
Meanwhile, Qualcomm is still waiting for one country’s regulatory approval before it goes forward with its NXP acquisition — China’s Ministry of Commerce (Mofcom). Eight other countries have already approved the deal. News about Qualcomm’s acquisition of NXP is on a rollercoaster lately, especially last Friday, after The South China Morning Post reported Mofcom had approved the deal. This turned out not to be the case, and an hour later President Donald Trump announced more tariffs against Chinese goods coming into the U.S.
