Disney lays off "several hundred" more employees

No teams have been eliminated at the company, just jobs, per the trade, and mostly ones based in Los Angeles. It’s reportedly the largest layoff the company has enacted in the last 10 months (and, as we’ve already pointed out, there’ve been quite a few!). It’s part of “an ongoing cost-cutting process” that’s happening across the industry as studios restructure around the streaming business and respond to those pesky “economic headwinds.” 

No doubt the economy is in an uncertain place (do we need to care about tariffs or not?!), but the winds seem to be blowing in Disney’s favor. Last month the company exceeded Wall Street expectations and reported $23.62 billion in revenue for the quarter, up seven percent from the year before, per Variety. With the smash success of Lilo & Stitch, the company currently has three of the top five worldwide box office earners of the year so far and a promising upcoming slate of releases (Pixar’s Elio, Fantastic Four: First Steps, Tron: Ares, Predator: Badlands, Zootopia 2, and to close out the year the sure-fire hit Avatar: Fire And Ash). In its quarterly earnings report, Disney predicted bigger gains and higher profits across the board for the fiscal year of 2025. 

Does such dazzling success require the human sacrifice of hundreds upon hundreds of jobs? That seems to be CEO Bob Iger’s guiding principle. He hit the ground running in his second term as Disney’s top dog, almost immediately announcing 7,000 layoffs for the year of 2023. (The total actually ended up being closer to 8,000, according to Variety.) Since then, the ruthless cuts have kept on coming, though, per Variety, the company reported employing 8,000 more people in September 2024 than it did the previous year. The outlet reports of the latest layoffs that “Disney is positioning the cuts as enhancing its ability to operate more efficiently.”