Netflix's building in Los Angeles, California; a shareholder has filed a class action lawsuit against the streaming company, which reported a dip in subscribers for the first three months of 2022
Netflix's building in Los Angeles, California; a shareholder has filed a class action lawsuit against the streaming company, which reported a dip in subscribers for the first three months of 2022

Netflix is letting go of another 300 workers as it continues to struggle against a decline in subscriber growth which has weighed down its stock price.

“Today we sadly let go of around 300 employees,” Netflix said in a statement Thursday. “While we continue to invest significantly in the business, we made these adjustments so that our costs are growing in line with our slower revenue growth. We are so grateful for everything they have done for Netflix and are working hard to support them through this difficult transition.”

The news follows a warning by Netflix in April where it told investors that it would be pulling back on its spending growth for at least the next two years. Netflix's Chief Financial Officer Spencer Neumann said that the company was trying to be "prudent" about how it was reducing its investments in the short term.

These layoffs are the second round of moves to shrink the Netflix workforce since that earnings call. In May, the company announced that 150 employees in North America would be let go, amounting to about 2% of the total workforce. Like the latest round, Netflix explained the decision as a result of slow growth.

In its attempts to diagnose the reasons for this fall, Netflix executives pointed the finger at a number of culprits including rampant password sharing between users and a drop in users that followed its suspension of services in Russia over the war in Ukraine.

Since then, Netflix has been left to ponder how it can stage a rebound. One possible, if controversial option, has been the introduction of a tiered subscription system that includes advertisements at the lower level subscriptions.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings mused about this option, something already done by rivals like Disney+ and Hulu, but the idea has yet to be formally adopted. At the same time, users have openly fumed over social media at the very idea of ads interrupting their Netflix experience after 15 years of streaming ad-free.

Netflix's stock stands at $180.305 per share on Nasdaq as of 3:08 PM Eastern Standard Time on Thursday, June 23, 2022.