Netflix is gearing up for major layoffs as the streamer has continued to face concerns from Wall Street about its future growth.
Puck reports that the streamer is considering cutting 5% of its workforce in a restructuring that could be announced as early as next week. It’s unclear which departments would be affected by the cuts. A Netflix spokesperson declined to comment.
As of the end of 2025, Netflix had approximately 16,000 full-time employees. The company’s last major staff reduction was back in 2022, though it laid off a small number of product team employees in February.
The planned cuts come as analysts from HSBC and Wells Fargo downgraded Netflix stock last month on “worrying” engagement trends and competition from YouTube. In July, Netflix accounted for 7.8% of TV viewership, compared to YouTube’s 14.2%, per Nielsen’s latest Gauge report.
In order to boost growth, Netflix has pushed into areas like podcasts, live events, sports, vertical video and gaming. It also has made efforts to lure YouTube talent to its platform, expanded its content lineup overseas through a partnership with French broadcaster TF1. and is exploring adding live channels and bundles with services such as Peacock.
It also entered into an $83 billion deal with Warner Bros. Discovery in December to acquire its studio and streaming assets, which ended up collapsing after it declined to match a rival $110 billion offer from Paramount Skydance. On Tuesday, the David Ellison-led media giant officially closed that deal.
During Bloomberg’s 2026 Screentime conference, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos acknowledged that the service is “not growing as fast as I want us to.”
“We’re working on making that move faster,” he added.
He also said that he didn’t regret bidding for WBD, noting that the plan was “solid.”
“We won the deal at some point, so we think we priced it right — at our scale. That was the top price point where I thought we could return value to our shareholders with that asset,” he explained. “Any more than that, I thought we’d be taking it into negative territory — even with our scale.”
When asked about the competitive impact of the Paramount-WBD merger, Sarandos said: ““It looks on paper— so far it’s one and one. So I don’t know if one and one is two, or one and one is one and a half, or one and one is three.”
He added that Netflix is not in the user-generated content business.
“We’re in the professionally produced content business,” he said. “Now, I think there’s a bunch of people on platforms that are doing pretty close to professional programming already, and if we can better monetize that programming for them, then we can make a deal with them. But we’re definitely not trying to bring over the whole population of creators.”
Shares of Netflix, which are trading at $70.96 apiece as of Friday morning, are down 42% in the past year, 22% year to date and 30% in the past six months.
