The Walt Disney Company has begun another round of layoffs, with a couple hundred employees reportedly losing their jobs as the company continues its cost-cutting efforts under CEO Josh D’Amaro.
According to an exclusive report from Deadline, the latest reductions are primarily affecting employees in departments including technology and human resources. The number of positions being eliminated is smaller than Disney’s previous two rounds of layoffs earlier this year.
Deadline reports that Disney Entertainment Television and Disney’s motion picture studio are largely unaffected by this round of cuts. Disney employed approximately 231,000 people worldwide at the end of fiscal 2025, including 172,000 employees in the United States.
The layoffs came shortly after Disney completed a voluntary early retirement program offered to certain cast members at the director level and above who were at least 50 years old and had worked for the company for 10 years or longer.
Concerns about additional cuts had already been circulating within the company. Earlier this month, Disney Chief Legal and Global Affairs Officer Horacio Gutierrez warned employees in his division about upcoming “hard choices” involving “staffing investments.” His memo also discussed a broader “transformation process” that included “automating certain workflows by leveraging the latest technologies,” according to Deadline. The staff reductions expected within that division are reportedly separate from the layoffs taking place now.
This is now the third round of layoffs we’ve seen since D’Amaro took over as Disney CEO in March 2026. About 1,000 jobs were cut just a month later, and several hundred more followed in July. That round hit Pixar and National Geographic particularly hard.
Disney had also signaled that more cost reductions could be coming. In an August shareholder letter, D’Amaro and CFO Hugh Johnston said the company remained focused on reducing expenses to free up money for future growth, including potential reductions in labor and other administrative costs.
These cuts aren’t on the same scale as what we saw during Bob Iger’s previous cost-cutting push. Disney eliminated roughly 8,000 jobs between 2023 and 2025, eventually reporting $7.5 billion in savings from those efforts.
