Netflix to Cut About 6% of Global Workforce

Netflix said Wednesday it will eliminate roughly 6 percent of its worldwide staff — about 1,000 jobs — in its largest round of layoffs since 2022, according to NBC News. The cuts, announced internally in a company-wide email from co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters, land days before the streaming giant is due to report third-quarter earnings and reflect deepening pressure on a company whose profits remain strong even as audience engagement stalls.

Context

The reduction is Netflix’s most significant since 2022, when it eliminated about 450 positions after reporting its first subscriber decline in more than a decade. The company had roughly 16,000 full-time employees as of the end of 2025, and has made smaller cutbacks since — including trimming several dozen members of its global product team earlier this year.

Despite the layoffs, Netflix is not a struggling business by most measures. It reported $45.2 billion in revenue in 2025, up 16 percent, and net income of $11 billion, up 26 percent, according to Variety. It projects 2026 revenue of $51.0 billion to $51.4 billion, up 13 to 14 percent, with an operating margin of 31.5 percent. But investors have grown uneasy about a subtler problem: the amount of time each customer spends watching is barely growing.

The Engagement Problem

Netflix users watched more than 97 billion hours of content in the first half of 2026, an increase of just 2 percent year over year, according to the company’s most recent quarterly earnings report. That near-flat growth stands in contrast to the company’s improving top line and suggests that recent subscriber gains have come largely from its password-sharing crackdown and a cheaper, ad-supported tier rather than from organic demand.

Co-CEO Ted Sarandos acknowledged the slowdown publicly. “Overall, we’re not growing as fast as I want us to, and we’re working on making that move faster,” he said in late September at Bloomberg’s annual media conference, as CNBC reported.

In the memo to staff, Sarandos and Peters framed the cuts as a matter of focus rather than retreat. “Our business is strong and growing, and we remain on track to deliver our full year forecast,” they wrote. “We’ll continue to invest aggressively in high impact areas to improve our service and further drive growth and innovation. Doing that means making focused choices across the business so we can keep delivering for our members, partners, employees, and investors.”

Where the Cuts Fall

Most of the reductions will hit Netflix’s product, technology, legal and human resources teams, even as the company continues to spend on content and new formats. The cuts come amid a difficult stretch for the stock: shares traded just below $70 on Wednesday and have fallen nearly 43 percent over the past 12 months, according to CBS News. The memo emphasized support for departing staff, noting that the process “will vary somewhat by country.”

“Decisions like these are never easy, and we don’t take them lightly,” Sarandos and Peters wrote. “Our top priority today is to support those who are leaving Netflix.”

A Broad Hollywood Retrenchment

Netflix is far from alone in trimming costs. CNBC reported that Disney said last month it would cut about 300 employees, mostly in HR and technology, under new CEO Josh D’Amaro. Skydance, which is combining Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery, is widely expected to shrink its workforce as it integrates the two companies’ streaming platforms, Paramount+ and HBO Max.

The competitive backdrop is shifting fast. YouTube remains Netflix’s biggest rival for viewer attention, and the forthcoming Paramount-WBD combination is shaping up to be a formidable challenger with an expanded content library. At the same time, Netflix has struggled to produce the kind of cultural phenomena — “Stranger Things,” “Squid Game” — that once drove both subscriptions and buzz, betting instead on live sports, documentaries and video games to lift engagement.

What’s Next

Netflix is scheduled to report third-quarter 2026 results on Tuesday, Oct. 20, after the market close, giving investors their first chance to weigh the layoffs against the company’s financial trajectory. In its second-quarter earnings report, Netflix posted revenue up 13.4 percent year over year to $12.6 billion with an operating margin of 33.4 percent, down slightly from a year earlier, and issued third-quarter revenue guidance below analyst expectations.

For now, the picture is one of a profitable company trying to convince Wall Street that it can grow engagement as effectively as it once grew subscribers. Whether a leaner organization can reignite that growth — or whether more cuts lie ahead across the industry — is the question the coming earnings season is likely to answer.