Netflix is laying off about 1,000 people, roughly 6% of its staff, its biggest round of job cuts since 2022. Co-CEOs Greg Peters and Ted Sarandos told employees Wednesday that most of the cuts will hit product, technology, legal and human resources teams, NBC News reported.
“Our mission, to entertain the world, is ambitious, and delivering on it requires us to be disciplined about where we prioritize our people and resources,” they wrote. The company said it will still “continue to invest aggressively in high impact areas” and remains on track for its full-year forecast.
Why is Netflix laying off workers?
Netflix is still one of the biggest streamers, but it isn’t growing like it used to. Viewers watched more than 97 billion hours on Netflix in the first half of 2026, only 2% more than a year earlier. “Overall, we’re not growing as fast as I want us to, and we’re working on making that move faster,” Sarandos said at a Bloomberg conference last month.
It also lost a major deal. Netflix lost a long bidding war for Warner Bros. Discovery’s studio and streaming business, which includes HBO, to Paramount Skydance earlier this year, TechCrunch reported. That leaves Netflix competing against a bigger Paramount, plus YouTube, TikTok and video games for people’s time.
Will the Netflix layoffs affect subscribers?
Not directly. The cuts are mostly behind the scenes, not in the shows and movies you watch, and Netflix says it will keep spending on what it calls high-impact areas. But companies cutting costs while growth slows often look for revenue too, which in streaming usually means price increases or more ads. Netflix reports its third-quarter results Tuesday, and that’s where any hints will show up.
The BeezLoop Take
Layoffs at a company that says it’s still on track to hit its forecast, and is still one of the biggest in its business, tell you where the industry is. Streaming has stopped being a growth story and become a fight over attention, and Netflix is trimming to protect its margins while it figures out its next move after losing Warner Bros. to Paramount.
For the 1,000 people losing jobs, “disciplined” is a cold word. For subscribers, watch Tuesday’s earnings for the real signal: whether Netflix plans to make up slower growth by charging you more.
The open question: will Netflix raise prices again in 2027, or lean harder on its ad-supported plan?
Also on BeezLoop: Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery are now one company.
Sources: NBC News · TechCrunch · KTLA (video)
