Kansas City, Mo ? Sprint Corp.’s wireless division will lay off about 1,600 workers, or 6 percent of the division’s work force, and release about 500 contractors, the company announced Thursday.

Sprint PCS President Len Lauer said the layoffs were part of the Overland Park-based company’s efforts to reorganize by getting rid of management and reprioritizing products and services to cut costs.

“With these moves, PCS is reducing layers of management to speed decision making,” Lauer said in a news release. “This will allow us to realize immediate, dramatic and positive impacts on Sprint customers, and deliver the kind of superior service our customers expect and deserve.”

The layoffs were to begin Thursday and be completed by the end of the year, the company said. About 660 of the job cuts will be in the Kansas City area, while the rest will be spread across the country, Sprint PCS spokesman Dan Wilinsky said.

The company said most of the affected employees work in marketing, information technology, network operations and finance.

“We’re making moves in areas that largely don’t face the customer, or impact the customer,” Wilinsky said.

Analysts said the moves made sense because industry growth has slowed.

“I don’t really expect that this will have much of an impact on the customer, but it will have an impact on the bottom line,” said Jeff Kagan, a telecom analyst based in Atlanta.

Shares of PCS rose 14 cents to close Thursday at $4.35 on the New York Stock Exchange.

Severance-related costs were expected to result in a pre-tax charge of about $31 million in the fourth quarter, the company said. The actions are expected to result in yearly savings of about $170 million.

Sprint, the nation’s third largest long-distance provider and fourth-largest wireless provider, has cut more than 13,000 jobs in the last year.

Sprint PCS operated a customer service center in downtown Lawrence until May, when it closed the facility, which employed about 500 people. The company transferred some of those workers to their Overland Park campus, but Sprint officials did not know how many Lawrence area residents were affected by this latest round of layoffs.