Netflix Lays Off Well Over 100 Workers, More May Follow
Netflix is laying off workers left and right.
Netflix is one of the mighty streaming platforms that gained numerous subscribers during the pandemic. But since 2020, the streaming service has had trouble retaining its customers. This year, the company dropped in revenue and didn’t mean its expected subscriptions for this past quarter. Due to profits decreasing, Netflix decided to lay off more than a hundred workers this week.
This isn’t the first round of layoffs Netflix did in 2022. After an abysmal fiscal report where the company disclosed it lost 200,000 subscribers, Netflix laid off countless higher-up employees. Since the company is still declining, 150 more employees were laid off this past week. Netflix took this drop in subscribers seriously since it was the first significant decline in a decade for the streaming platform. The company has decided the best course of action is to lay off as many employees as possible to cut costs.
A Netflix spokesperson elaborated on this cycle of layoffs in a recent e-mail statement. Because of the declining revenue at the company, Netflix decided to “slow our cost growth” as well. More than one hundred dedicated employees lost their steady jobs, which were primarily US-based. The spokesperson stated that the layoffs had nothing to do with individual performance but were completely informed by Netflix’s recent business profits.
Since the company documented its loss of 200,000 subscribers in April, Netflix expects to lose plenty more in the summer months. Next month, Netflix anticipates two million subscribers will leave the company’s subscription plan. This is an unfathomably large number of subscription drops, a phenomenon many wouldn’t suspect due to Netflix’s well-known TV shows and self-produced movies.
But for many, the increasing cost of a Netflix subscription is too much to pay in this economy. The price for just about everything has gone up immensely since the beginning of 2022, and the average family can’t always afford limitless streaming services. Netflix also credited the Russian invasion of Ukraine and national sanctions as a critical part of its subscription loss. Since Russia is one of the largest oil exporters in the world, sanctions on the Slovac nation stopped fuel accessibility for countries worldwide, accelerating the average oil barrel price. This has had a ripple effect on the globe, feeling the financial burden on transportation, fuel, and general goods costs.
Password sharing is a problem Netflix also addressed that has hindered the company’s profits. The streaming service initiated a new feature to stop excessive password sharing in March. This feature would limit people not living together who share their Netflix accounts. An extra fee would be applied if a subscriber wanted to share their password with someone outside their home. The unveiling of this feature was not popular with subscribers, and people expressed their criticism immensely online. The feature has yet to be utilized in the US and is still being tested out in Peru, Costa Rica, and Chile.
Though Netflix has had many worldwide television successes, the streaming platform still faces substantial profit declines. If the company continues to lose value, another round of employee layoffs could be imminent.
