Netflix is eliminating approximately 1,000 jobs worldwide, representing about 6 percent of its workforce, as the streaming company confronts slowing growth and seeks to improve customer engagement.
The layoffs are Netflix’s largest since 2022 and will primarily affect employees working in product development, technology, legal and human resources, according to an internal email from co-CEOs Greg Peters and Ted Sarandos as reported by the Wall Street Journal.
“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 in the message.
The reductions come one week before Netflix is scheduled to report its quarterly financial results. Executives told employees the company remains on track to meet its full-year earnings forecast. Netflix has been expanding its programming offerings in an effort to encourage subscribers to spend more time watching its service.
Those efforts include adding live television channels, sports programming, video podcasts and shows produced by YouTube creators. Netflix has also pursued distribution partnerships and streaming bundles to attract and retain customers.
Despite those initiatives, the company’s shares have declined more than 40 percent over the past year amid concerns about slowing growth.
Stock Price
Netflix continues to maintain relatively strong subscriber retention. Research firm Antenna estimates that its monthly cancellation rate in the United States is slightly above 2 percent, among the lowest in the streaming industry.
The layoffs also follow a change in how Netflix reports its business performance: Beginning in 2025, the company stopped regularly disclosing subscriber counts and average revenue per user (ARPU), metrics previously used by investors and analysts to evaluate its streaming operations. At the end of 2024, Netflix reported nearly 90 million paying subscribers in the United States and Canada, approximately 10 million more than a year earlier.
The company also experienced substantial international subscriber growth, particularly in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. But industry analysts generally consider international subscribers to be less-financially lucrative compared to subscribers in North America, where the company’s average revenue per user (ARPU) has typically trended higher. Netflix reported U.S. ARPU of $17.20 at the end of 2024, compared with $10.96 in Europe and $7.29 in the Asia-Pacific region.
The decision to discontinue subscriber reporting drew criticism from some Wall Street analysts, including Needham & Company’s Laura Martin, who questioned whether the change would make it more difficult to evaluate Netflix’s growth prospects.
“The less data you have, the less somebody can defend you,” Martin said during Parks Associates’ Future of Video conference last November. “When you tell me X, but you don’t do X, I take down your shares because there’s something going on that you don’t like me to know about or that makes me skeptical.”
Netflix’s previous major workforce reduction occurred in June 2022, after the company reported its first quarterly subscriber decline in more than a decade. The latest layoffs follow staffing reductions at other technology and entertainment companies, including Disney and Amazon.
Netflix is scheduled to disclose its third quarter (Q3) financial results next week.
