Netflix Cuts 1,000 Jobs, Steepest Reductions Since 2022

Netflix will cut 1,000 jobs globally, its steepest reduction since 2022 and roughly 6% of its total workforce. The cuts will fall mainly on human resources, legal, product and technology teams.

Co-chief executives Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters announced the decision in an email to staff. Commenting on the "organisational changes", they said: "Our mission - to entertain the world - is ambitious, and delivering on it requires us to be disciplined about where we prioritise our people and resources."

Managers will tell employees whether their job has been cut "soon", the email said.

Why is Netflix cutting now?

The layoffs land in a streaming market reshaping itself through consolidation and shrinking attention. Paramount's $110bn (£83.6bn) merger with Warner Bros, the owner of HBO, closed as the industry's defining deal. Netflix had come close to its own agreement with Warner Bros but was outbid in the end by Paramount.

Free platforms keep pulling viewers away. YouTube and TikTok now compete directly for the hours subscribers once spent inside Netflix. Investors have responded by weighing user engagement - the amount of time customers spend on the service - alongside subscriber counts.

Last month, Sarandos told the Bloomberg Screentime summit that the company was "not growing as fast as I want us to".

What did the executives promise?

The email to staff paired the cuts with a commitment to keep spending. Sarandos and Peters said Netflix would "continue to invest aggressively in high-impact areas to improve our service and further drive growth and innovation".

The company also said it remains on track to meet its financial forecasts. Netflix is due to report its latest results on 20 October.

Where has Netflix tried to grow?

The company has pushed into two new revenue lines:

• Gaming, as an expansion beyond film and television
• Adverts that play before and during shows and films

Neither has replaced the core subscription business. Ross Benes, senior analyst at eMarketer, said "they haven't been able to find another line of major revenue".

He added that Netflix remains dependent on subscriptions, a business that could be approaching a plateau. "Eventually, because they're nearing a ceiling with that, they'll need another revenue stream to diversify, and that's where it's been more of a struggle," he said.

How does this compare with 2022?

The last major redundancy round at Netflix came in 2022. The company cut about 450 jobs then, after losing subscribers for the first time in more than a decade. Today's reduction is more than double that figure - 1,000 jobs against 450 - and it arrives without a reported subscriber decline driving it.

The difference matters. In 2022, cuts followed a clear shock. In 2025, they follow a strategic squeeze: a lost bidding war, slowing growth, and rivals led by Paramount-Warner Bros with far greater scale. The 20 October results will show whether the discipline the executives promised buys the growth Sarandos says the company still lacks.