Market / Money

Netflix is cutting 1,000 jobs while the money is still good

The cuts take out about 6 percent of the workforce and are the streamer's biggest round of layoffs since 2022. They land less than a week before third quarter results, and the odd part is the context: revenue is growing, viewing is not.

Los Gatos, California · October 18, 2026

Netflix told staff on Wednesday that about 1,000 jobs are going, roughly 6 percent of a workforce that stood at about 16,000 full time employees at the end of 2025. It is the company's largest layoff round since 2022. The news was first reported by The Wall Street Journal, from an internal email by the co chief executives, and was carried the same day by Variety, CNBC and the Los Angeles Times. The cuts fall hardest on product, technology, legal and human resources, and the games teams are in there too, including staff at Helsinki based Next Games.

Here is the strange part. The money is fine. Netflix took in 12.6 billion dollars of revenue in the second quarter, up 13.4 percent on a year earlier. What is slowing is attention. The company says members watched more than 97 billion hours in the first half of 2026, but that was up only about 2 percent on the year before. A streamer can raise prices and add advertising for a while, and Netflix has done both well. It cannot print more hours in the day, and those hours are the raw material the whole business runs on.

Wall Street has noticed. The shares trade near 70 dollars, down more than 40 percent over the past year and about 44 percent below a 52 week high of 124.86 dollars. That slide frames how investors will read these cuts. In a growing stock, layoffs get described as efficiency. In a falling one, they get described as a company searching for a story that works. Netflix is close enough to both descriptions that Tuesday's earnings call, not this week's memo, will decide which one sticks.

Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters, the co chief executives, called the move discipline, telling staff the company has to be disciplined about where it prioritises its people and resources. They also said the full year forecast still stands: revenue of 51.0 billion to 51.4 billion dollars and an operating margin of 31.5 percent. That pairing is the whole argument in one move. Cut now, while the numbers are strong, and the cuts read as a choice. Cut later, under pressure, and they read as a symptom.

So Tuesday night is the test. Netflix reports third quarter results after the US close on October 20, and it has guided for revenue of 12.86 billion dollars and earnings of 82 cents a share. Beat that guide, and this reset looks like a confident company tightening up early. Miss it, and a thousand layoffs stop looking like discipline and start looking like the first admission that the growth years are over. The jobs, either way, are already gone.