Ericsson job cuts ‘a knife in the heart’ of Sweden

Ericsson is cutting about a fifth of its Swedish workforce and hundreds of consultants as demand for its network equipment falls and competition from China’s Huawei and Finland’s Nokia grows.

The 3,900 job cuts remove most of Ericsson’s remaining manufacturing presence at home, where it had 5% of global production, and come before it has found a new CEO to replace Hans Vestberg, who was pushed out in late July as major investors revolted over the Swedish firm’s performance.

Failure to offset waning demand for telecom equipment has caused Ericsson shares to lose a quarter of their value this year and politicians and unions had scrambled in recent weeks to save jobs at the company, which was founded in 1876 as a maker of telegraph equipment and is one of Sweden’s biggest employers with a global staff of 116,500.