Netflix has once again announced another round of job cuts barely a month after cutting 150 employees after streaming revenues went down and its subscriber loss in more than a decade in April.
The streaming giant said it was cutting 300 more jobs which translates to around four per cent of its workforce and a total of six per cent layoffs since May.
The firm has been exploring an ad-supported service while also cracking down on password sharing as it tried to boost its growth.
In April, the streaming giant stunned the industry by revealing that it had lost 200,000 members in the first three months of 2022, with another two million sets to leave in the next quarter. The announcement caused a sell-off among investors, with the company’s shares dropping 35% in one day. It is now worth $190 (£152), down by 46 per cent from its recent high.
While Netflix continues to be the obvious market leader with 220 million users worldwide, it has experienced severe competition in recent years with the introduction of alternative services such as Disney Plus, HBO, and Amazon’s Prime Video.
Earlier in a statement, the company said, “These changes are primarily driven by business needs rather than individual performance, which makes them especially tough as none of us wants to say goodbye to such great colleagues,”
The company also recently embarked on a series of price increases in the US, UK and elsewhere, which have also contributed to its subscriber losses. The firm says it expects its subscriber count to fall by another two million in the three months to July, after dropping by 200,000 in the last quarter.
Although Speculations around the job cuts at Netflix come a mid the rising worries in the US that the labour market boom the country has enjoyed since the pandemic is coming to an end, a Surveys by Kantar research firm consistently identify saving money as the number one reason for cancelling streaming services including in the US, where overall streaming subscriptions have held steady, unlike the UK.
On Thursday, Ted Sarandos, the company’s co-chief executive, told an audience at a conference in Cannes on Thursday that Netflix was in talks with many companies as it explores new advertising partnerships to appeal to price-sensitive audiences.
The job cuts are becoming more evident with the rising interest rates and no company has been spared. A study by Layoffs.fyi according to the BBC also notes that signs of slowdown are particularly evident in the tech sector, where start-ups have cut nearly 27,000 workers since May roughly double the number recorded in all of 2021.