Netflix told employees on October 14 that it will lay off about 6% of its workforce, nearly 1,000 positions, in what the Associated Press called the company’s biggest round of job cuts in years. Co-chief executives Greg Peters and Ted Sarandos announced the cuts in a memo, and the product, technology, legal and human resources teams are the most affected. The cuts come while the business is still growing: Netflix earned $3.4 billion on $12.56 billion of revenue in the second quarter. The company has not said whether the savings change anything for subscribers.
For the people who pay for Netflix, the layoffs do not touch a bill. The service’s current U.S. plans cost $8.99 a month with ads, $19.99 for Standard and $26.99 for Premium, and Netflix has announced no change to those prices. The two stories are connected, though: the AP reported that Netflix’s profit growth came from membership signups and price increases, and the company’s third-quarter forecast fell below Wall Street’s expectations. Those third-quarter results are due next week.
Netflix reports third-quarter results on October 20, and its own forecast for that quarter already fell below Wall Street’s expectations.
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The memo and the teams it reaches
Peters and Sarandos wrote in the memo, which the Associated Press obtained, that Netflix needs to be “disciplined about where we prioritize our people and resources” while it keeps investing in future growth. They added that “decisions like these are never easy, and we don’t take them lightly.” The Wall Street Journal reported the cuts first. Beyond the memo, Netflix declined to comment, and no severance terms or breakdown by team have been reported.
Netflix had about 16,000 full-time employees at the end of 2025, about 10,900 of them in the U.S. and Canada, according to its annual securities filing as reported by Fox Business. A 6% cut works out to nearly 1,000 positions worldwide. Puck News had reported days earlier that about 5% of staff would go, which Variety translated to roughly 800 jobs; the figure the co-CEOs announced came in higher.
How the cut compares with 2022
Netflix’s 2022 layoffs came in two stages. The company let go of 150 employees in May of that year and about 300 more in June, almost 3% of its staff, after its first subscriber loss in more than a decade, TechCrunch reported. Netflix said then that it made the adjustments “so that our costs are growing in line with our slower revenue growth.” Variety put the 2022 total at about 450, so the round announced this week is more than double that. Several dozen people on the global product team had also lost their jobs earlier in 2026, according to Variety.
The setting is different this time. The 2022 cuts followed a drop in subscribers, while this round follows a second quarter in which earnings and revenue both grew, and the memo itself says business is strong. Variety reported that engagement was up 2% year over year in the first half of 2026. Growth is the sticking point: revenue grew, but the company’s third-quarter forecast came in under analysts’ expectations.
Variety reported that the second-quarter results matched Wall Street’s forecasts, while the third-quarter revenue guidance fell short of analysts’ estimates and the stock dropped. Sarandos said at the Bloomberg Screentime conference that live programming takes about 5% of Netflix’s content budget but generates about 1% of viewing. The memo does not say which of those priorities the cuts are meant to fund, and Netflix declined to comment beyond it.
A streaming market that is consolidating
Netflix holds 19% of the streaming market, according to JustWatch figures cited by the AP, with Amazon Prime Video and Disney+ close behind. Paramount’s $81 billion buyout of Warner Bros. Discovery closed last week, and the combined company plans to unify its streaming products into a single service over time. Netflix had agreed late last year to buy Warner’s studio and streaming business but walked away in February.
Netflix prices and the October 20 earnings report
Netflix’s help center lists the current U.S. prices: Standard with ads at $8.99 a month, Standard at $19.99 and Premium at $26.99. The Basic plan has been discontinued. An extra member costs $7.99 a month on the ad plan or $9.99 without ads, and Premium allows up to two extra members. Those are the numbers any future change would be measured against.
The next date on the calendar is October 20, when Netflix reports third-quarter results after the market closes, Variety reported. The company’s own forecast for that quarter landed under analyst expectations, so the report is the first look at how growth held up after that guidance. Prices were one of the two drivers the AP credited for second-quarter profit growth, alongside new memberships.
In the same Los Angeles appearance, Sarandos said Netflix is “not growing as fast as I want us to, and we’re working on making that move faster.” The layoffs lower costs; the price list is the only number in this story that reaches a subscriber’s statement, and Netflix has said nothing about changing it.
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This article was prepared with AI assistance from cited public sources and reviewed before publication.
