Disney Is Laying Off Even More People, Is The Mouse House Finally Crumbling?
Disney's third round of layoffs is here, with around 3 percent of its workforce being cut.
Cost-cutting seems to be the name of the game these days, and according to Deadline, Disney’s third wave of planned layoffs is well underway with around 7,000 employees, or 3 percent of Disney’s total workforce, on the chopping block. Disney CEO Bob Iger confirmed back in March that these cost-cutting measures, among others, will save the company roughly $5.5 billion.
The first round of Disney layoffs occurred on March 27, and involved cuts in the metaverse strategies unit as well as part of their Beijing office. We saw the second, and most significant wave of layoffs just a month later, which impacted several divisions across the company including: Disney Entertainment, ESPN, and Disney Parks, Experiences, and Products. Fortunately for the hourly workers at Disney’s parks and resorts, they will likely not experience layoffs because they are considered to be valuable front-line operational employees, and they are absolutely vital in keeping this part of the Disney machine running smoothly.
Disney hasn’t only been reducing their workforce as a cost-cutting measure, however. It has been recently announced that dozens of titles will be removed from Disney+, including Willow, Black Beauty, Just Beyond, and The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers. But as upsetting as it is to lose access to your favorite show on streaming, we’d argue that losing your livelihood is a much worse scenario.
If we take this information at face-value, there’s hope that Disney will emerge from this downsizing, which is a critical step in securing its legacy for years, and hopefully, decades to come.
This isn’t new territory when it comes to large media conglomerates, however. Disney is just one of many companies that are throttling the resources that work, and downsizing the ones that are costly in an effort to secure profitability in the coming years. AMC and Paramount are just a couple examples of downsizing in the form of impairment charges and layoffs, but we’re starting to see the bigger picture.
AMC is reportedly seeing a light at the end of the tunnel in regard to their restructuring efforts, and it’s not outside the realm of possibility that Disney will do just the same. These massive overhauls take time, and although we’re witnessing a staggering amount of collateral damage in the interim, we can only hope that these efforts will yield a desirable outcome. AMC went through similar restructuring last year, and their investment choices, layoffs, and restructuring efforts look like they are starting to take a promising turn based on what we’ve been told.
In other words, it’s absolutely true that Disney is going through a number of growing pains, but they’re to be expected as Disney continues to navigate through their restructuring. At the end of the day, content cuts and layoffs are never a good look. But if the final outcome results in more jobs being generated down the line, then we need to have some faith in these executive decisions to streamline their organization in a way that will preserve the company’s bottom line.
