Virgin Mobile USA (NYSE: VM) said today it’s laying off about 45 employees in its New Jersey and California offices, which represents about 10 percent of the overall workforce. It now will have about 400 employees on payroll. In a memo sent to employees today, Virgin’s CEO Dan Schulman explained that the company was able to identify places where they were able to cut because of the company’s transition of IT services to IBM and through the acquisition of Helio. The Warren, New Jersey-based company reported third-quarter financial results, easily beating expectations. Schulman: “Our intent is to expand our investment in both our prepaid and new postpaid business and, in order to do so profitably, we must continue to identify opportunities to reduce operating costs across all areas…Virgin Mobile USA is well positioned to weather these tough times and build our business in 2009.”