Southwest cuts back on recruitment

Tuesday, 14 Jan, 2025 0

Southwest Airlines is continuing on its cost-cutting journey with a pause on corporate hiring and promotions, and scrapping summer internships.

CEO Bob Jordan said some employee team-building events will be ditched to cut costs.

“Every single dollar matters as we continue to fight to return to excellent financial performance,” Jordan said in an internal communication.

He said more cuts will happen ‘when it makes sense.’

“We made a lot of progress in 2024 but we’re still far from our goal of returning to industry-leading profit margins,” Jordan wrote.

“A key risk in 2025 is acting as if the urgency has passed and therefore not sustaining the focus.”

“We’ll continue to evaluate hiring needs on an ongoing basis to determine when it makes sense for the business to resume hiring,” an airline spokesperson added.

Southwest has already made key operational changes such as ditching its decades long open seating process and cutting many underperforming routes.

It also announced it will start red eye flights to increase aircraft use efficiency.

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Editor for TravelMole North America and Asia pacific regions. Ray is a highly experienced (15+ years) skilled journalist and editor predominantly in travel, hospitality and lifestyle working with a huge number of major market-leading brands. He has also cover in-depth news, interviews and features in general business, finance, tech and geopolitical issues for a select few major news outlets and publishers.

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