The first round is expected to happen before Disney’s annual shareholder meeting on April 3.
American multinational media company Walt Disney commenced its first round of job cuts on Monday. The company previously announced laying off 7,000 employees in order to streamline its business.
According to a Reuters report, Disney Entertainment, Disney Parks, Experiences and Products, and corporate are some of the major divisions that will be impacted by this week’s layoffs. The company-owned sports channel ESPN is not impacted by the first round of job cuts but is expected to be included in the coming rounds.
The first group of affected employees would get a notification from Walt Disney’s chief executive officer Bob Iger over the next four days. While the second round of layoffs is expected to happen in April, the final round is anticipated to begin before the start of the summer.
While the details of the job elimination have been closely guarded by the company, the first round is expected to happen before Disney’s annual shareholder meeting on April 3. Sources at Reuters noted that television production and acquisition departments would be one of the first areas targeted for cuts, resulting in the departure of senior executives.
Walt Disney is not the first company to lay off its employees. Several companies including Mark Zuckerberg-led Meta, Sundar Pichai-led Alphabet, Elon Musk-led Twitter, and Satya Nadella-led Microsoft, among others, are laying off thousands of employees in an attempt to gear up for a global economic slowdown.
On Monday, Microsoft-owned popular internet hosting platform GitHub reportedly laid off its entire engineering team in India. According to Business Today, the move has impacted 142 engineers in the company. In a nutshell, a setback in consumer spending due to high inflation and interest rates along with the threat of a looming recession this year has pushed corporates to keep a lid on their spending.
