“As Southwest Airlines Employees, we consider our Coworkers as Family,” the airline wrote on its company blog in 2014. In 2007 CBS News reported that Southwest had never had a layoff. It avoided layoffs after the attacks of September 11, 2001, and again during the pandemic.
On February 17, 2025, Southwest announced that it would cut about 1,750 corporate jobs, about 15 percent of its corporate workforce. CEO Bob Jordan said: “This decision is unprecedented in our 53-year history.” Reports called them the first major layoffs in the company’s history. The activist investor Elliott Investment Management had been pressing the airline to raise its profits.