Netflix is preparing to lay off about five percent of its workforce as soon as next week, cutting up to 800 of its roughly 16,000 employees, according to Reuters.
It would be the streaming giant’s largest round of layoffs since 2022, when the company cut hundreds of jobs during a subscriber slump.
This time the pressure is coming from a crowded field of smaller streaming services and from YouTube, which keeps grabbing a bigger slice of online TV viewing.
The cuts come despite Netflix posting strong headline numbers. The company reported second-quarter revenue of $12.56 billion in July, a 13 percent jump over 2025, along with net income of $3.4 billion and an operating margin of 33.4 percent.
But Netflix also trimmed its full-year 2026 revenue forecast to a range of $51 billion to $51.4 billion, while projecting $3 billion in advertising revenue for the year. Investors reacted hard: the stock dropped more than 8 percent after the earnings release.
In response, Netflix is pushing further into gaming, live programming and advertising in an effort to shore up growth.
Co-CEO Ted Sarandos acknowledged the slowdown earlier this month at Bloomberg’s 2026 Screentime event.
“Overall, we’re not growing as fast as I want us to, and we’re working on making that move faster,” Sarandos said.
He also drew a clear line on strategy, ruling out any pivot toward user-generated content.
“We’re definitely… not in the UGC [user-generated content] business,” Sarandos said, adding, “We’re in the professionally produced content business.”
