The cuts

Netflix is cutting about 6% of its workforce, roughly 1,000 positions, in its biggest round of layoffs since 2022. The Wall Street Journal reported the reductions, citing an email that co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters sent to staff on the morning of 14 October 2026. Most of the job cuts will fall on product, technology, legal and human resources teams. The reductions apply across the company's global staff, the report said. The company had about 16,000 full-time employees at the end of 2025. Netflix did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Why the company is cutting

The cuts are linked to slowing growth and to difficulty keeping viewers engaged. Netflix faces intense competition for people's time in a consolidated media market, so it has moved beyond subscriptions into advertising, live programming, video games and sports broadcasts. Its library has also added video podcasts and shows made by YouTube creators. Netflix is weighing live channels and bundles with other streaming platforms as further options.

What the co-CEOs wrote

The email described the company's mission of entertaining the world as ambitious and said delivering it required discipline in setting priorities for people and resources. The co-CEOs said Netflix would keep investing heavily in the areas most important to its development, while making deliberate choices about how to divide its funds and resources. They added that these choices were needed to keep meeting the expectations of subscribers, partners, employees and investors. The layoffs mark a new phase of reorganization, aimed at containing costs while strengthening the areas the company sees as strategic.

Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery

Netflix had bid for the film studio and streaming assets of Warner Bros. Discovery but was outbid by Paramount Skydance. Paramount completed the $110 billion acquisition in early October 2026, creating a media group that combines major film studios with television and news operations. Netflix is therefore out of the contest for those Warner Bros. assets, and the deal has left a single company holding studios, broadcast and journalistic businesses.

Key dates in the Netflix layoffs and Paramount deal
  1. Paramount Skydance completes its $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery
  2. Co-CEOs email staff about cuts of about 6% of the workforce, reported by the Wall Street Journal

Subscriber retention and share price

Rzeczpospolita reported that Netflix is performing well at keeping subscribers, citing data from the analytics firm Antenna. Antenna put Netflix's subscription cancellation rate in the United States at just over 2%, which it described as the best result in the streaming industry. That retention has not been reflected in the share price. Over the 12 months to mid-October 2026, Netflix shares lost more than 40% of their value.