The Walt Disney Company has started a fresh round of layoffs that will impact around 300 workers at the entertainment giant’s corporate operations.
The workers include staffers involved in human resources, finance, communications and the legal department.
“We continually evaluate ways to invest in our businesses and more effectively manage our resources and costs to fuel the state-of-the-art creativity and innovation that consumers value and expect from Disney,” a spokesperson for the company said in a statement emailed to reporters on Thursday. “As part of this ongoing optimization work, we have been reviewing the cost structure for our corporate-level functions and have determined there are ways for them to operate more efficiently.”
It is at least the fourth round of layoffs to impact Disney employees over the past two years. Last summer, Disney released a handful of employees from its National Geographic business, which it acquired from present-day Fox Corporation several years ago. Workers at Pixar Animation Studio and some Disney-owned broadcast TV stations were also let go earlier this year.
This fresh round of layoffs started on Wednesday, the same day rival entertainment company Paramount started releasing workers associated with some of its entertainment and news productions.
Disney and Paramount were among several entertainment companies that increased their production of original content, particularly during the coronavirus health pandemic, in an effort to position their direct-to-consumer streaming services as an attractive offering to TV and film fans. Few of those original productions paid off, though they were expensive to make; to address this, companies have been lowering their commissions of original shows and looking at ways to trim expenses across their business units.
