Lumen cut jobs again in late October, anonymous posts say — and no WARN filing records any of it

Anonymous posts on Reddit and TheLayoff.com say Lumen Technologies, the Monroe, Louisiana telecom company formerly known as CenturyLink, cut jobs on October 28–29. A poster who said they work on the company's marketing creative team wrote that the team lost eight copywriters and three designers. The company has not publicly confirmed the cuts, and no WARN filing in US Layoff Radar's data records a layoff under the Lumen name.

Anonymous posts say Lumen Technologies cut jobs on October 28 and 29, in what would be at least the third round of layoffs at the company this year. The reports come from anonymous posts, not from the company: in a November 4 post on Reddit's r/Layoffs forum, a user who said they do not work at Lumen wrote that former colleagues were describing "a bloodbath" on LinkedIn, and asked how many people were affected. On TheLayoff.com, a poster who said they work on Lumen's marketing creative team wrote that the team lost eight copywriters and three designers on October 28. Other posters described cuts in customer-facing teams and said another round is rumored for November 20. US Layoff Radar could not independently verify how many people were affected in total, and Lumen has not publicly confirmed the October cuts.

The October reports follow a confirmed round in July. On July 9, the trade publication Channel Dive reported that Lumen had confirmed cuts to its Global Partner Solutions team: about 90 people, most of them informed on July 1 and due to leave on July 10. The report described it as the company's second major workforce reduction of the year. It also noted that Lumen had not filed any WARN notices, suggesting the cuts did not exceed 50 people in any particular state.

That is the pattern that keeps Lumen out of the official record. Under the federal WARN Act, an employer must give 60 days' notice before a layoff of 100 or more full-time workers at a single site of employment, or 50 to 99 workers if they make up at least a third of the site's full-time workforce. Cuts dealt out in small batches, spread across many locations, can stay below those triggers, and some state mini-WARN laws set their own thresholds. Some posters on TheLayoff.com call the approach "quiet targeted" layoffs aimed at avoiding WARN filings; that is their characterization, not a finding about the company's intent.

Lumen has cut before. In April 2024 the company shed just under 7% of its workforce, most of it voluntary, as it moved to "right-size our business through automation and AI," according to Channel Futures. In US Layoff Radar's data, the only filings under the company's former name are six CenturyLink notices totalling 537 workers, the latest dated 2017, plus two undated Minnesota rows from 2020. No filing appears under the name Lumen, which the company adopted in September 2020.

Lumen, headquartered in Monroe, Louisiana, is the former CenturyLink. It has spent the past several years shedding legacy consumer businesses to focus on enterprise network services, pitching its fiber network for AI workloads. By the second quarter of 2026 it had announced $13 billion in Private Connectivity Fabric deals, and management said it remained on track for about $700 million of run-rate savings exiting 2026. Third-quarter results are scheduled for after the market closes on November 4.

Separately, on October 23, Lumen filed a Form 8-K saying it had consolidated its executive severance arrangements into a new plan that "preserves substantially the same benefits" as before, including a restated agreement for chief executive Kate Johnson providing 104 weeks of base salary plus target bonus on a qualifying non-change-in-control termination. The filing does not mention layoffs.

What remains unverified: the total number of people affected in October, which teams beyond marketing and customer-facing roles were hit, and whether the rumored November 20 round happens.