Sprint announced today - shortly after a Donald Trump name-drop - that it was planning to "bring back" 5000 jobs to the United States. Trump claimed the deal was brokered in part by Sprint's owner, Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son.

Predictably, the new jobs seem likely to be centered around sales and customer service positions if Sprint's press release is any indicator. This means the vast majority of these new positions will be poorly paying and first in line for any future belt-tightening if things go south at America's #4 carrier. Of course, there could be positive ramifications for Sprint subscribers in the form of improved customer support and reduced wait times in stores.

The already somewhat bittersweet news is further tempered by the fact that Sprint actually cut 2500 of these same jobs earlier in the year - all in the US. This would mean the net number of jobs being created is far less than 5000, and if you go back a little further yet in recent Sprint history, they had cut another 1700 jobs in 2014. In short, Sprint has already done its fair share in the other direction here, and adding 5,000 employees to fill low-quality, low-paying positions that were previously on the chopping block doesn't make them look especially competent.

It also reeks of pandering to the President Elect, though we should probably avoid the beast of politics in this forum. Regardless, Sprint is definitely trying to use the current climate to get some time under the positive PR limelight. Whether they're truly deserving of such recognition for today's announcement is far less clear, though. It also appears the jobs we already planned as part of a previous announcement this month made by Masayoshi Son that he eventually planned to create a far less believable 50,000 new jobs in the US.

PRESS RELEASE

Source: Sprint