Netflix Readies 800-Job Cut, Largest Staffing Reduction Since 2022

By Daniel Okafor

Netflix plans to cut about 800 jobs — roughly 5% of its workforce — as soon as next week, according to a Puck News report citing anonymous sources. The streamer ended 2025 with approximately 16,000 full-time employees.

A Netflix spokesperson declined to comment on the report. No departments were named in it.

What does the layoff involve?

The restructuring "will impact" about 5% of staffers and "could be announced as early as next week," Puck reported. Roughly 68% of Netflix's workers — about 10,900 people — sat in the U.S. and Canada as of December.

If confirmed, the round would mark Netflix's largest single contraction since 2022. The 800 positions now reported would approach twice the 450 jobs cut that year.

When did Netflix last cut this deep?

In 2022, Netflix eliminated approximately 450 positions after a net loss of 200,000 subscribers in the first quarter. That subscriber drop was the company's first in over a decade, a watershed moment for the streaming sector.

Netflix has since trimmed in smaller doses, including several dozen layoffs on its global product team earlier in 2026. None approached the scale now telegraphed by Puck.

Why is the streamer slowing down?

User engagement (hours streamed per subscriber) rose 2% year-over-year in the first half of 2026. Co-CEO Ted Sarandos, speaking at last month's Bloomberg Screentime conference in Los Angeles, conceded the pace lags behind ambition.

"We want to keep growing it faster," Sarandos said. "Yes, overall, we're not growing as fast as I want us to, and we're working on making that move faster."

Q2 still delivered double-digit revenue gains across every geographical region. Sarandos singled out live programming as the chief drag on viewing metrics. The format consumes about 5% of Netflix's content budget (its overall spending on films, series, and live events) yet produces roughly 1% of total watching — a lopsided trade the streamer has chosen to keep.

What's the streaming context?

The 2022 contraction followed Netflix's first subscriber decline in a decade. The current round comes despite Q2 double-digit revenue gains across every region — meaning the slowdown reads as a problem of pace, not collapse. Sarandos has been careful to frame it that way.

For a platform now spending across film, series, and live programming, the squeeze lands where the work actually gets made.

What's next on the calendar?

Netflix reports third-quarter 2026 earnings on Tuesday, Oct. 20, after market close. If the layoffs land next week, they arrive roughly three weeks ahead of that call — a familiar corporate ritual of tidying the headcount before the quarterly photograph.

The Oct. 20 call will tell investors whether Sarandos's measured tone survives contact with the numbers. It will also surface whether the live-events bet keeps its 1% of total viewing while consuming 5% of the content budget.