Netflix is gearing up for major layoffs as the streamer has continued to face concerns from Wall Street about its future growth.

Puck reports that the streamer is considering cutting 5% of its workforce in a restructuring that could be announced as early as next week. It’s unclear which departments would be affected by the cuts. A Netflix spokesperson declined to comment.

As of the end of 2025, Netflix had approximately 16,000 full-time employees. The company’s last major staff reduction was back in 2022, though it laid off a small number of product team employees in February.

The planned cuts come as analysts from HSBC and Wells Fargo downgraded Netflix stock last month on “worrying” engagement trends and competition from YouTube. In July, Netflix accounted for 7.8% of TV viewership, compared to YouTube’s 14.2%, per Nielsen’s latest Gauge report.

In order to boost growth, Netflix has pushed into areas like podcasts, live events, sports, vertical video and gaming. It also has made efforts to lure YouTube talent to its platform, expanded its content lineup overseas through a partnership with French broadcaster TF1. and is exploring adding live channels and bundles with services such as Peacock.

It also entered into an $83 billion deal with Warner Bros. Discovery in December to acquire its studio and streaming assets, which ended up collapsing after it declined to match a rival $110 billion offer from Paramount Skydance. On Tuesday, the David Ellison-led media giant officially closed that deal.

During Bloomberg’s 2026 Screentime conference, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos acknowledged that the service is “not growing as fast as I want us to.”

“We’re working on making that move faster,” he added.

He also said that he didn’t regret bidding for WBD, noting that the plan was “solid.”

“We won the deal at some point, so we think we priced it right — at our scale. That was the top price point where I thought we could return value to our shareholders with that asset,” he explained. “Any more than that, I thought we’d be taking it into negative territory — even with our scale.”

When asked about the competitive impact of the Paramount-WBD merger, Sarandos said: ““It looks on paper— so far it’s one and one. So I don’t know if one and one is two, or one and one is one and a half, or one and one is three.”

He added that Netflix is not in the user-generated content business.

“We’re in the professionally produced content business,” he said. “Now, I think there’s a bunch of people on platforms that are doing pretty close to professional programming already, and if we can better monetize that programming for them, then we can make a deal with them. But we’re definitely not trying to bring over the whole population of creators.”

Shares of Netflix, which are trading at $70.96 apiece as of Friday morning, are down 42% in the past year, 22% year to date and 30% in the past six months.

EXCLUSIVE: Academy Award nominees Geeta Gandbhir, Sam Pollard, and Alisa Payne are joining the Oscar-contending short documentary Water Cooler as executive producers.

Emma V.F. directed the film, which she shot in the corridors of immigration court at Federal Plaza in New York City. Filming openly, V.F. captured scenes of jarring contrast: ICE agents engaged in mundane “water cooler” talk and then those same agents seizing migrants in the hallways who were following proper procedures to seek legal status in the U.S.

At one moment, the agents – most of them masked – would be talking amongst themselves about shopping for Black Friday deals, for instance, or the latest taser models. The next moment, they were forcibly detaining someone who had showed up to immigration court little expecting to be grabbed before they walked into court.

“The observational documentary — which [V.F.] filmed from November 2025 through January 2026 — juxtaposes agents’ casual conversations with tense scenes of the agents arresting immigrants who attended required court hearings to seek legal status,” notes a description. Water Cooler won Best Documentary Short at Palm Springs International ShortFest 2026, qualifying the film for Oscar consideration.

“Water Cooler is an urgent documentary short that sends a powerful message about a defining issue of our time,” said Pollard (MLK/FBI, Tutu). “America is at a tipping point with ICE and their outrageous incursions into our cities, which is why films like this are so important.”

Gandbhir (The Perfect Neighbor, The Devil Is Busy), observed, “Emma V.F.’s film Water Cooler honors the direct cinema style pioneered by Bob Drew and D. A. Pennebaker while turning her lens on masked federal agents. Even in a short runtime, it does what the films of those pioneers did — immerses you in a world that is crucial to see for yourself.”

Water Cooler screens on Saturday at the Hamptons International Film Festival in New York, on Sunday, October 18 at the Woodstock Film Festival in New York, and on October 24 at AFI Fest in Los Angeles. Next month, it’s programmed at the St. Louis International Film Festival. In addition to Palm Springs International ShortFest, the documentary has screened at DC/DOX in the nation’s capital.

The documentary is a production of Spoonbill Stories and Message Pictures, the latter a company founded by Gandbhir, Pollard, and Payne (Payne earned an Oscar nomination earlier this year for producing The Perfect Neighbor). Water Cooler is directed, produced, filmed and edited by Emma V.F. Along with Gandbhir, Pollard, and Payne, Blair Foster (Marty, Life is Short; Taxi to the Darkside) serves as an executive producer. Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe (Seeds, Union, Power) composed the original score.

V.F. directed the 2023 documentary feature Queen of New York. Her producing credits include In the Same Breath (HBO); Silver Dollar Road (Amazon Studios); Take Your Pills: Xanax (Netflix) and Once Upon a Time in Uganda.

“As the granddaughter of Italian immigrants and Jewish New Yorkers who would be outraged to see masked federal agents disappearing law-abiding people down stairwells in their city, I knew this was a film I needed to make,” Emma V.F. said in a statement. “I’m thrilled to partner with Message Pictures to share the film more widely in hopes that it inspires collective action opposing ICE.”

Watch a teaser-trailer for Water Cooler here:

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