Disney Cuts Around 300 Jobs in Latest Round Under CEO Josh D'Amaro

Disney is laying off around 300 employees, the latest round of job cuts since CEO Josh D'Amaro took the helm earlier this year, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The majority of the cuts hit human resources and technology roles, said the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

The reduction follows a pattern that has defined D'Amaro's tenure. In April, Disney planned to eliminate as many as 1,000 roles as the CEO consolidated the company's enterprise marketing division, CNBC reported at the time. Further cuts came in July, when Disney reduced its workforce by several hundred people across corporate functions, including at Pixar, ESPN, Disney Entertainment Television and Disney's studios, according to various media reports.

The July reductions were not evenly distributed. The majority of those layoffs occurred within Pixar and National Geographic, the reports showed.

Disney signaled that more trimming was coming. In its August earnings report, the company warned it was evaluating ways to reduce costs, and around that time it began offering early-retirement buyout packages to longtime executives.

"We remain highly focused on reducing costs across the enterprise to create incremental capacity to invest for growth and are evaluating a variety of levers, including reductions in labor and SG&A," Disney said in that report. "We are mid-stream in this work and will provide future updates on progress."

The company's own language makes clear the layoffs are one component of a broader efficiency push. Beyond labor reductions, Disney is weighing cuts to selling, general and administrative expenses — a lever that typically touches everything from marketing spend to corporate overhead.

The scale of the restructuring to date is substantial when tallied across the year. April's planned elimination of up to 1,000 roles, July's cuts of several hundred more, and the current reduction of roughly 300 positions together represent a significant contraction of Disney's corporate workforce since D'Amaro assumed leadership.

The choice of targets is also telling. Concentrating cuts in human resources and technology suggests Disney views these functions as areas where it can operate leaner without directly touching its content engines — the studios, networks and franchises that generate revenue. The earlier Pixar and National Geographic reductions, by contrast, reached into creative units, indicating that no division has been fully shielded from the cost review.

Deadline was first to report this most recent round of layoffs.

Disney has told investors it is "mid-stream" in its cost work and will provide future updates on progress. That phrasing signals the roughly 300 job cuts announced this week are unlikely to be the final step, and executives seeking buyouts may accelerate the headcount reduction before the company reports its next set of results.