Walt Disney Corporation announces it is laying off 140 workers, 2% of its workforce

The Walt Disney Corporation announced Wednesday that it is laying off 140 workers, equivalent to 2% of its total workforce.

The television division is the only one affected by this new wave of layoffs, with National Geographic experiencing the greatest losses by having to cut 60 jobs, 13% of its total workforce.

Variety recall that Disney acquired the brand, known for its history and nature documentaries, as part of its 2019 purchase of 21st Century Fox for which it paid a total of $71 billion.

Another channel affected by the move is Freeform as well as various positions in the company's marketing and advertising teams. However, the company assured, no entire team will be laid off, which is considered good news.

Layoffs are nothing new. They are part of the restructuring plan that, Bob Iger announced last May, would focus on reducing "quite drastically" spending that went to Pay TV content, particularly that "aimed at the traditional networks." 

However, other assets of the company have also reduced their workforces, such as Pixar, which did away with 14% of its workforce in May of this year.

But how did Walt Disney Corporation reach this crisis? Bob Iger claimed that the main culprit of the company's economic losses was none other than its streaming platform, Disney +, where the entertainment giant had invested "too much."

And faced with this, Iger's only solution is to restructure and continue the wave of layoffs that already ended last year with the jobs of 7,000 people as the company tries by all means to improve its economic results, weighed down by a series of controversies that led the company to celebrate, in the darkest way possible, its 100th anniversary.