In an email to employees on Thursday, T-Mobile President and CEO Mike Sievert announced that by the end of September, the company would be laying off almost 5,000 employees, or roughly 7 percent of the company’s total workforce,.

In the email, which was disclosed in a Securities and Exchange Commission filling, Sievert said the layoffs will primarily target corporate, back-office, and technology roles, and that retail and other customer-facing employees “will not be impacted.”

Sievert said the positions which will be impacted are “primarily duplicative to other roles,” or they no longer are in alignment with changing systems, processes, or “company priorities.” He also said the company was not planning on making and further cuts in the near future.

Sievert said in the email, “This is a large change, and an unusual one for our company. We’re tackling the tough decisions now, because I wanted to make sure that people working here are not wondering what’s next, after this process concludes. Because of this, we do not envision making additional large-scale reductions across the company again in the foreseeable future.”

He noted the restructuring had become necessary as customer demands have increased following the company’s merger with Sprint in 2020, as expenses associated with increasing the company’s customer base have grown.

Sievert said, “What it takes to attract and retain customers is materially more expensive than it was just a few quarters ago. We’ve been out-running this trend by accelerating merger synergies, and building our high-speed Internet business faster than expected, and out-performing in a few other areas.”

He added, “However, it is clear that doing everything we are doing and just doing it faster is not enough to deliver on these changing customer expectations going forward.”

With these cuts T-Mobile joins a growing list of companies, mostly in the tech sector, which have been forced to announce mass layoffs as the economic environment has deteriorated.