Disney Prepares Another Round of Layoffs as Managers Face 20% Cost Cuts

Disney is gearing up to cut several thousand jobs, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke to CNBC. Some managers have been told to slash costs by as much as 20%, the people said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss the plans publicly.

This is the third known wave of cuts since Josh D'Amaro became CEO earlier this year. In April, Disney trimmed roughly 1,000 jobs, mostly in marketing. In September, it cut about 300 more, concentrated in human resources and technology. Bloomberg first reported this latest round.

The pattern suggests something more deliberate than a one-off correction. Disney executives have been telegraphing this for months. In an Aug. 5 letter to shareholders, D'Amaro and CFO Hugh Johnston wrote that the company remained "highly focused on reducing costs across the enterprise to create incremental capacity to invest for growth" and said it was "evaluating a variety of levers." They added that the work was "mid-stream" and promised further updates.

That same month, Disney rolled out an early retirement program for some employees. Chief People Officer Sonia Coleman followed with an Aug. 24 memo to staff framing the moves as part of a broader organizational overhaul. "This is one of several actions we're taking to reshape our organization, including involuntary staff reductions that have already begun in some areas and will continue into next year," she wrote.

So the layoffs now surfacing aren't a surprise so much as a continuation of a plan the company has been signaling since late summer. What's notable is the scale of the ask on managers: a 20% cost reduction is a significant target, not a trim around the edges.

For context on size, Disney had about 231,000 employees at the close of its fiscal 2025, which ended last September, per the company's annual financial report. Several thousand job cuts would be a small fraction of that total, but the recurring nature of the reductions, three distinct rounds in under a year, points to sustained pressure on the bottom line rather than a single department-specific fix.

Not alone in trimming costs

Disney's moves fit into a broader pattern across the entertainment industry. Netflix told staff in a memo last month that it's cutting about 6% of its workforce. Skydance, the company formed by combining Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery, is also expected to cut jobs as it works toward $6 billion in merger-related synergies over three years.

The shared thread is clear enough: legacy media and streaming companies are all under pressure to find savings, whether from restructuring, M&A integration, or the broader economics of streaming versus traditional television. Disney's cuts land in that same environment, even as the specific triggers inside the company differ from its peers.

Disney is scheduled to report fiscal fourth-quarter earnings on Nov. 17, which will likely bring more detail on how far these cost-cutting efforts extend and what, if anything, the company plans to do with the savings. Given that D'Amaro and Johnston explicitly framed the cuts as freeing up capacity to "invest for growth," the earnings call may be the moment Disney starts explaining where that reinvested capital is headed.