Disney Wants To Cut Costs By 20%, The Great Corporate Reset, Why Disney, Big Tech And Global Companies Are Rethinking How Many People They Need

Walt Disney is preparing for another round of workforce reductions, with the entertainment company asking some managers to identify annual cost savings of as much as 20%, according to recent reports. The proposed savings could come through a combination of job eliminations and other expense reductions, with some parts of the business, including theme parks, television networks and the film studio, expected to be disproportionately affected.

Disney employed approximately 231,000 people worldwide at the end of its previous fiscal year. Chief Executive Officer Josh D’Amaro reportedly intends to redirect a portion of the savings towards film and television programming, technology, theme parks and cruise businesses. The company is also targeting double-digit growth in adjusted earnings per share in the current fiscal year.

For Disney, this is hardly the first exercise of its kind. The company announced a restructuring programme in 2023 under former CEO Bob Iger, targeting $5.5 billion in cost savings and eliminating approximately 7,000 jobs. The reductions affected several businesses, including ESPN, ABC, Pixar and the company’s entertainment operations. Subsequent restructuring exercises have continued to affect different parts of the organisation.

The latest move comes as Disney, like other traditional entertainment businesses, deals with changing television viewing habits, the economics of streaming and competition from digital platforms. Its challenge is to protect profitability while continuing to fund the businesses it believes can drive future growth. In that sense, the proposed job cuts are not simply about reducing the payroll. They are part of a broader effort to change how the company allocates its resources.

Big Tech’s Recurring Layoff Cycle

If Disney’s latest restructuring exercise reflects the pressures facing traditional entertainment businesses, the technology industry offers an even bigger illustration of how frequently large companies are revisiting their workforce requirements.

Amazon, Oracle, Dell, Meta, Microsoft and Uber have all featured in the latest wave of corporate job reductions, with some of the largest technology employers announcing cuts even as they continue to invest in new products, infrastructure and artificial intelligence.

Amazon is perhaps one of the clearest examples of this recurring cycle. The company announced approximately 14,000 corporate job cuts in October 2025, followed by another 16,000 in January 2026. The latter was described by the company as part of an effort to reduce organisational layers, increase ownership and remove bureaucracy.

Amazon subsequently confirmed further smaller reductions, including cuts in its retail and devices businesses in October 2026. The repeated exercises suggest that the company’s restructuring has extended beyond a single round of workforce rationalisation.

Oracle, meanwhile, has been reducing its workforce while significantly expanding its cloud infrastructure and AI-related investments. Data from Layoffs.fyi showed that approximately 21,000 Oracle employees had been affected by job reductions in 2026 by September 10.

Dell had reported 11,000 cuts, while Meta and Microsoft had recorded 10,400 and 4,800 respectively. Uber had also been linked to approximately 3,300 job reductions. These figures are tracker-based estimates and reported totals, rather than a uniform count of completed layoffs across all companies.

The scale of the reductions becomes clearer when viewed against the industry’s overall numbers. Layoffs.fyi recorded more than 128,500 technology job losses across 299 companies by September 10, 2026, already exceeding the 122,606 recorded across 278 companies during the whole of 2025. The tracker subsequently raised its 2026 tally to more than 135,000 employees across 331 companies.

What makes this particularly interesting is that these are not all companies retreating from their markets. Several are expanding investment in cloud computing, AI infrastructure and automation even as they reduce employee numbers.

For the technology industry, the exercise increasingly appears to involve deciding which parts of the business need more capital, which require fewer organisational layers and where a smaller workforce can deliver the same or greater output.

Why Companies Are Cutting Jobs Even When They Are Investing Billions

The apparent contradiction between rising technology investments and shrinking workforces becomes easier to understand when viewed through the lens of corporate spending. Companies are not necessarily abandoning growth plans when they announce layoffs.

In many cases, they are changing how they intend to achieve that growth, while trying to keep operating costs under control. The money saved through restructuring can be redirected towards businesses and technologies that management believes will generate stronger returns.

There are several forces driving this shift.

The first is the correction of pandemic-era hiring. Technology companies expanded aggressively when demand for digital services surged, often building large teams across product development, sales, customer support and operations. As growth normalised, some of those organisations found themselves carrying higher employee costs and overlapping management structures. Subsequent rounds of job cuts have therefore become a way to simplify operations, remove duplication and improve productivity.

The second factor is the growing cost of competing in emerging technology markets. AI infrastructure, cloud computing and data centres require substantial capital investment. Companies are committing increasingly large sums to computing capacity, specialised chips and the infrastructure needed to develop and deploy AI services.

This creates pressure to examine spending elsewhere, including employee costs. Oracle’s workforce reductions alongside its cloud and AI infrastructure expansion illustrate this shift, while Meta’s restructuring has also coincided with its push to increase AI investment.

There is also the pressure to demonstrate profitability. Investors increasingly want companies to show that their technology investments can translate into revenue, stronger margins and sustainable earnings growth. Cutting costs, simplifying management structures and reallocating resources towards higher-priority businesses can help management make that case.

This does not mean every layoff is directly funding an AI project or that companies are necessarily replacing employees with machines. The more significant change is that workforce planning is becoming part of a wider capital-allocation exercise. Businesses are deciding not just how much they want to invest, but where human labour remains essential, where technology can improve output and which functions no longer require the same number of employees.

Is AI Replacing Employees Or Changing The Jobs Companies Need?

Artificial intelligence has become an increasingly prominent part of the explanation companies offer for restructuring, but the relationship between AI adoption and job losses is more complicated than the headlines suggest. While automation is beginning to affect certain functions, not every workforce reduction can be attributed to technology replacing human employees. Cost pressures, post-pandemic over-hiring, organisational redesign and changing business priorities continue to play significant roles.

A September 2026 analysis by S&P Global offers an indication of this distinction. Its research found that companies were more likely to prioritise process efficiency and employee productivity through AI than explicitly target reductions in headcount. Among surveyed enterprises, 64% identified process efficiency as an AI objective, while 59% prioritised employee productivity.

Only 24% identified headcount reduction as a primary objective. The findings suggest that businesses are initially looking at AI as a way to improve how existing teams work, even if the longer-term employment consequences could be different. 

However, the pressure is not evenly distributed across occupations. Routine development work, first-line technical support, data processing, administrative tasks and repetitive analysis are among the functions facing greater automation risks. By contrast, specialised engineering, cybersecurity, infrastructure management and product development continue to require human expertise, although the nature of these roles is also changing.

A Stanford Digital Economy Lab study, revised in August 2026, offers another important warning sign. Using payroll data covering millions of US workers, researchers found no evidence of widespread economy-wide job displacement. However, employment among workers aged 22–25 in occupations highly exposed to AI was 19% below the level it would have reached had it kept pace with less AI-exposed occupations. Experienced workers did not show a comparable employment gap.

This raises a more immediate concern than the prospect of entire professions disappearing overnight. Companies may increasingly need fewer junior employees for tasks that can be automated or completed with AI assistance, potentially making it harder for new entrants to gain experience. At the same time, experienced professionals who can work with AI tools, manage complex projects and make decisions requiring human judgement may become more valuable.

The result could be a gradual reshaping of the workforce rather than a straightforward replacement of people by machines. AI may not be eliminating every job, but it is beginning to change how many employees companies need, which skills they value and where they choose to hire.

India Is Not Insulated, Even As GCCs Take On Bigger Responsibilities

The workforce restructuring taking place across global technology and financial services companies is also being felt in India, particularly across Global Capability Centres (GCCs).

For years, India has benefited from multinational companies shifting technology, finance, research, engineering and business operations to the country. These centres have evolved from relatively low-cost support operations into important parts of global businesses, handling increasingly complex functions. However, that expansion has not made them immune to the cost-cutting decisions of their parent companies.

According to a Moneycontrol report, estimates of job reductions across India’s GCC ecosystem range from 4,000–5,000 to 25,000–30,000, depending on the industry experts cited. The difference between these estimates is substantial, but both point towards workforce adjustments taking place even as the sector continues to expand.

PayPal and Visa are among the companies that have reportedly reduced positions in India, reflecting how global restructuring decisions can affect employees working thousands of kilometres away from a company’s headquarters.

The contrast is particularly interesting when viewed against the size of the sector. India’s GCC ecosystem employs approximately 2.4–2.5 million people across more than 2,100 centres, according to the Moneycontrol report. These centres are also taking on larger global mandates, with multinational companies increasingly relying on Indian teams for product engineering, technology development, data analytics, cybersecurity and other specialised functions.

This means the changes underway are not necessarily a sign that multinational companies are pulling back from India. Instead, some are reorganising their operations, reducing certain roles while investing in capabilities they consider more valuable. Routine processes and overlapping functions may face greater pressure, while specialised technology and decision-making responsibilities become more important.

For India’s employment market, however, this creates a complicated equation. The GCC sector may continue to attract investment and take on more sophisticated work, but that does not automatically translate into proportionate workforce growth. A centre handling more responsibilities does not necessarily need to employ more people if technology, automation and redesigned workflows allow existing teams to deliver greater output.

The Changing Employment Equation And The Growing Cost Of Job Insecurity

For employees, the problem with the latest wave of corporate restructuring is not limited to the possibility of losing a job. Increasingly, it is the uncertainty surrounding when the next round of cuts might arrive. A November 2026 report illustrates how repeated layoffs are leaving employees in a state of prolonged insecurity, with workers who survive one restructuring exercise often finding themselves facing another a few months later.

Teams are reshuffled, projects are put on hold and responsibilities are redistributed, making job security difficult to take for granted even for those who remain employed.

The consequences can extend well beyond the initial period of unemployment. Industry experts point to the possibility of labour-market scarring, where professionals who lose their jobs take longer to find comparable positions, accept lower salaries or experience interruptions in career progression.

This is particularly relevant for India’s technology workforce, where changing skill requirements and slower recruitment in certain functions could make it harder for experienced professionals to find roles that match their previous responsibilities and compensation.

Younger workers may face a different challenge. As companies automate routine tasks and expect smaller teams to deliver more output, entry-level hiring could come under pressure. The traditional route of entering an organisation through junior roles, learning on the job and gradually moving into more specialised responsibilities may become less accessible in some functions.

However, job reductions do not necessarily mean that the underlying talent has become redundant. Some companies are looking at retraining and redeployment as alternatives to eliminating positions.

Zoho, for instance, said in October 2026 that it would forgo annual salary hikes rather than cut jobs, while retraining employees for emerging business requirements. The approach may not be practical for every organisation, but it illustrates that companies have choices when restructuring their operations.

Ultimately, the employment equation is changing in ways that affect both existing workers and those entering the job market. The ability to adapt to new technologies, acquire specialised skills and move between functions could become increasingly important as companies reassess the size and composition of their teams.

Leaner Companies, But At What Cost?

For global companies, the attraction of a leaner workforce is understandable. Lower operating costs, fewer organisational layers and greater productivity can help improve margins while freeing up capital for investments in technology, infrastructure and new business opportunities.

Disney’s latest restructuring plans reflect this calculation, as the company looks to reduce expenses while continuing to invest in its entertainment and experiences businesses.

But there is a distinction between eliminating unnecessary costs and repeatedly reducing employee numbers to meet financial targets. A smaller workforce may improve short-term efficiency, but companies must also ensure that they retain the experience, institutional knowledge and specialised talent required to develop products, serve customers and sustain growth.

The same challenge is playing out across Big Tech and India’s GCC ecosystem. Businesses are becoming more selective about whom they hire, what work they retain and how they deploy technology. Whether this produces more productive organisations or simply a more uncertain employment market will depend on how effectively companies manage that transition.

The corporate world may be learning to do more with fewer people. The bigger question is whether the growth it hopes to achieve will eventually create enough new opportunities for the people being left out of the process.