CVS Health plans to cut thousands of corporate jobs nationally. In Hartford, it owns health insurer Aetna. [Hartford Courant]

Hartford Courant (CT)

CVS Health Corp, which owns Hartford-based health insurer Aetna, plans to eliminate 5,000 corporate job nationwide this year, as the pharmacy giant seeks to trim expenses and shift investments into health care delivery and technology that will drive its future growth.

The job cuts were disclosed in an internal employee memorandum late Monday. A CVS spokesman said there was no breakdown yet of the job cuts planned regionally, including Hartford. The majority of CVS corporate jobs in Connecticut are in Hartford after CVS acquired Aetna in 2018.

CVS employs about 300,000 nationwide and the planned job cuts represent about 2% of the Rhode Island-based company’s overall workforce.

“Our industry is evolving to adapt to new consumer health needs and expectations,” CVS said, in a statement. “As part of an enterprise initiative to reprioritize our investments around care delivery and technology, we must take difficult steps to reduce expenses.”

“This unfortunately includes the need to eliminate a number of non-customer facing positions across the company,” the statement said.

“We do not expect there to be any impact to our customer-facing colleagues in our stores, pharmacies, clinics or customer services centers. We’re committed to supporting impacted colleagues, and they will receive severance pay and benefits, including access to outplacement services.”

A loss of jobs at Aetna’s massive headquarters in Hartford’s Asylum Hill would come at the time the city is struggling with major employers that still have a large cross-section of their employees still working at least part of the week at home. Employers in the city are still seen as a key component that feeds downtown’s ecosystem of restaurants, shops and entertainment venues.

When CVS Health Corp. acquired health insurer Aetna Inc. in 2018, its agreement with state insurance regulators in Connecticut included a promise to keep employment at Aetna and its subsidiaries at 5,300 for at least four years after the deal closed. The employment levels reflected staffing as of Oct. 1, 2018.

The current employee levels in Hartford and Connecticut were not immediately available Tuesday.

CVS completed its acquisition of Aetna in November 2018. The majority of Aetna employees are located in Hartford, where CVS also agreed to keep Aetna’s headquarters for a decade and create a center of excellence for CVS’s insurance business.

In 2020, CVS cut what the company characterized as a “very small percentage” of jobs in Hartford, as it absorbed Aetna. At the time, CVS did not disclose specific numbers.

Check back for updates.

Contact Kenneth R. Gosselin at [email protected]