T-Mobile CEO John Legere accepts the award for CEO of the Year at the 2018 GeekWire Awards. (GeekWire Photo / Kevin Lisota)

T-Mobile CEO John Legere has taken the case for the megamerger with Sprint to the public in recent weeks, and today he released his latest pitch for the deal: Jobs.

Legere said the company found that “opposition-funded economists had practically pulled numbers out of thin air to justify their claims” of job losses at a combined T-Mobile-Sprint. Legere wrote in the blog post that between customer service jobs and retail store expansions, the “New T-Mobile” will employ 11,000 more people by 2024 than the individual companies would have.

Legere pointed to T-Mobile’s acquisition of MetroPCS in 2013 as an example of its job creation track record. Though Legere didn’t give hard numbers, he did write that MetroPCS, which T-Mobile recently rebranded, “added tens of thousands of jobs,” since the acquisition.

“We have doubled Metro’s customer base and store count, and expanded to serve five times as many markets,” Legere wrote. “As a result, we’ve added tens of thousands of jobs at Metro, including employees, dealers and contractors. Compare these results to others in our industry who continue to lay off workers and it’s pretty obvious we’re not like the others. We never have been, and we never will be. Side note – we really DON’T want to be, either.”

Last spring, T-Mobile and Sprint agreed to merge and create a $146 billion company called simply, T-Mobile. The consolidated company’s primary headquarters would be in T-Mobile’s hometown, Bellevue, Wash., with another office in Sprint’s home of Overland Park, Kan.

T-Mobile and Sprint have been making the case for their merger, which needs federal approval, for months. They claim the deal will allow them to better compete with industry titans AT&T and Verizon and catalyze American leadership in the development of 5G wireless technology.

Legere himself has been stumping for the deal through a series of blog posts. In the last six weeks he has authored several posts outlining what he sees as the benefits of the deal, including 5G, better prices for the consumer and alternatives to fixed broadband.

The companies want to get regulatory signoff on the deal in the first of the year. The deal has faced significant scrutiny from regulators, and in February 37 House Democrats signed a letter of opposition, expressing concerns about going from four major carriers to three and the deal’s impact on low-income communities and people of color.

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