Employers
Netflix is eliminating about 6% of its workforce, or roughly 1,000 jobs, with most of the cuts falling on its product, technology, legal and human resources teams. Co-CEOs Greg Peters and Ted Sarandos told employees in a memo on Oct. 14, and the company confirmed the size of the reduction to TechCrunch the same day.
The Wall Street Journal first reported the layoffs. NBC News said a person with knowledge of the matter confirmed the Journal’s reporting was accurate, and The Associated Press, which also obtained the memo, described the round as the biggest the company has carried out in years.
What the company said
The memo framed the cuts as a matter of priorities rather than distress. “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,” Peters and Sarandos wrote, according to NBC News. They said the company would “continue to invest aggressively in high impact areas” while “making focused choices across the business.”
“Decisions like these are never easy, and we don’t take them lightly,” the co-CEOs wrote, according to the AP. Netflix told TechCrunch it remains on track to deliver its full-year forecast. Beyond the memo, the company declined to comment further to the AP.
Netflix has not filed a Form 8-K about the reduction with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and it has not said how the cuts break down by country or office, or what severance affected employees will receive.
The size of the base
The 6% figure is measured against a workforce of about 16,000 full-time employees. In its annual report for 2025, Netflix said it had approximately 16,000 full-time employees as of Dec. 31, 2025, with about 10,900, or 68%, in the United States and Canada; 2,500 in Europe, the Middle East and Africa; 1,900 in Asia-Pacific; and 700 in Latin America. The company also employs people in content production, some of them part-time or temporary, who are counted separately. Its principal executive offices are in Los Gatos, California.
About 1,000 positions is therefore roughly one in every 16 full-time roles. Because the cuts are concentrated in corporate functions, the share within product, technology, legal and HR is likely to be higher than 6%, though Netflix has not given a figure for any team.
Why now
The reduction comes as Netflix works to lift viewing time. Members watched more than 97 billion hours of content in the first half of 2026, up 2% from a year earlier, NBC News reported, citing the company’s most recent quarterly report. “Overall, we’re not growing as fast as I want us to, and we’re working on making that move faster,” Sarandos said at Bloomberg’s annual media conference late last month, according to NBC News.
TechCrunch noted that Netflix is competing for attention with YouTube, TikTok and Instagram, and has been adding live events and sports, games, video podcasts and an expanded advertising tier. The business itself remains profitable: the AP reported second-quarter profit of $3.4 billion on revenue of $12.56 billion, up 9% and 13% from a year earlier, though the company’s third-quarter forecast came in below Wall Street’s expectations.
What to watch
Netflix will post its third-quarter 2026 results and outlook on its investor relations site on Tuesday, Oct. 20, at about 1:01 p.m. Pacific time, followed by a live video interview with Peters, Sarandos and Chief Financial Officer Spence Neumann at 1:45 p.m. That will be the first chance for executives to explain publicly how much the cuts save and where the company plans to keep hiring.
For job seekers, the layoffs add experienced product managers, engineers, lawyers and HR specialists to a market where large media and technology employers have been trimming corporate staff. NBC News noted that Disney has cut hundreds of jobs this year. Those skill sets do not share a single reemployment path, and demand for each will depend on the employer and the role, not on the Netflix headline.
Sources
- NBC News, “Netflix to cut about 6% of worldwide staff,” October 14, 2026. https://www.nbcnews.com/business/media/netflix-layoffs-rcna603454
- TechCrunch, “Netflix to lay off 1,000 staff amid intensifying competition for user attention,” October 14, 2026. https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/14/netflix-to-lay-off-1000-staff-amid-intensifying-competition-for-user-attention/
- The Associated Press via ABC News, “Netflix is laying off 6% of its workforce, in its biggest round of job cuts in years,” October 14, 2026. https://abcnews.com/Business/wireStory/netflix-laying-off-6-workforce-biggest-round-job-137262053
- Netflix, Inc., Form 10-K for fiscal year ended December 31, 2025, January 23, 2026. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1065280/000106528026000034/nflx-20251231.htm
- Netflix (PR Newswire), “Netflix to Announce Third Quarter 2026 Financial Results,” September 14, 2026. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/netflix-to-announce-third-quarter-2026-financial-results-302873060.html
Featured photo: An office building at 101 Albright Way in Los Gatos, California, one of four buildings on Netflix's headquarters expansion campus north of State Route 17, photographed July 14, 2018. Photo: Coolcaesar, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0). Cropped from the original.
