Netflix will cut 6% of its workforce amid slowing growth. The company's stock has fallen 40% over the past year

Netflix plans to cut about 1,000 jobs—roughly 6% of its global workforce—according to the Financial Times and Bloomberg. This is the streaming company’s largest round of layoffs in four years. The company has faced a drop in its stock price and growing investor concerns about slowing growth and audience engagement, the FT reports.

The layoffs will primarily affect Netflix’s product, technology, legal, and human resources departments, the FT reported. Co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters announced the decision to employees in an internal memo, which was reviewed by the FT and Bloomberg.

"Our mission—to entertain the whole world—is ambitious, and to achieve it, we need to take a disciplined approach to allocating human resources and setting priorities," the company's executives wrote.

Over the past year, Netflix shares have lost more than 40% of their value. Investors are concerned about the slowdown in user engagement, and the failed attempt to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery has raised further questions about whether the company has enough strong original content of its own, the FT notes.

Netflix is trying to increase the amount of time subscribers spend on the platform by expanding its offerings of live sports broadcasts, video podcasts, and shows featuring YouTube creators. At the same time, investors remain dissatisfied with the service’s portfolio of movies and TV series. As of 2026, Netflix has yet to release a single hit comparable in audience reach to “Stranger Things,” “Squid Game,” or “Wednesday” in previous years, the FT reports.

Netflix is “approaching the end of a year that has fallen short of expectations,” the FT quotes MCH analyst Brian White as saying. According to him, competition for audience attention is intensifying as video content becomes an increasingly important part of the business of leading social platforms. “Consumers have more and more services competing for their time,” White added.

Despite significant spending to attract well-known directors and actors, Netflix films that premiere directly on the streaming platform often fail to become cultural events capable of attracting new subscribers, the Financial Times notes. Under these circumstances, the company is rethinking its approach to theatrical releases. In 2027, Netflix plans to release “Narnia,” directed by Greta Gerwig, who is known for the film “Barbie,” in theaters around the world, moving away from its usual model of a direct release on the streaming service or the film’s appearance there a couple of weeks after its theatrical run.

News of the layoffs emerged a week before the release of the quarterly earnings report. Sarandos and Peters told employees that Netflix still expects to meet its full-year financial forecast, according to the FT.

The company last carried out large-scale layoffs in 2022—after reporting a quarterly decline in subscribers for the first time in more than a decade. At that time, Netflix revised its business strategy, and the situation prompted a reassessment of the streaming model’s prospects throughout Hollywood, the Financial Times noted.

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