Netflix announced Thursday that it has laid off 300 employees in a second round of job cuts after losing subscribers for the first time in more than a decade.
The layoffs account for about 4% of the streaming giant’s workforce and mostly affect employees in the United States. They came after the company cut 150 jobs last month.
“As we continue to invest heavily in the business, we have made these adjustments so that our costs grow in line with our slower revenue growth,” a statement from Netflix said.
In February, Netflix said it lost 200,000 subscribers worldwide in early 2022 and forecasts a decline of 2 million users in the coming quarter.
The company blamed the decline on a number of factors, including increased competition, the economy, the war in Ukraine and the large number of people sharing their bills with non-paying households.
Last month’s layoffs also affected the company’s US workforce. Defenders and former employees said the layoffs at the time included many employees from underrepresented groups and that the company also seemed to be withdrawing from some of the diverse content it had funded in the years after George Floyd’s death.
Ted Sarandos, chief content officer and co-executive at Netflix, at the Cannes Lions summit on Thursday. Photo: Eric Gayard / Reuters
“Almost everyone I see on LinkedIn posting about layoffs has worked on diversity, equality and inclusion across the company,” tweeted former Netflix employee Evet Dion at the time. “These are not the only people who have been fired, but there are too many of the 150 to match.”
The company denied these reports. It did not immediately respond to the Guardian’s request for comment on Thursday.
To offset subscriber losses, Netflix is also considering adding advertising to the service in exchange for a lower-priced subscription in addition to cost-cutting, a move it has long opposed.
On Thursday, Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos said the company was in talks with several companies for advertising partnerships.
Media reports earlier this week said he was in discussions with Google’s Alphabet and Comcast’s NBCUniversal about potential marketing links.
“We’re talking to all of them right now,” Sarandos told a Cannes Lions conference when asked which company Netflix wanted to partner with.
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