Paramount Slashing 1,000 Jobs Wednesday in First Round of Mass Layoffs

Paramount will be cutting 1,000 jobs this Wednesday as part of the major shakeup under new CEO David Ellison.

The incoming cuts will reportedly affect close to 2,000 employees at the company, beginning with the 1,000 impending layoffs, TheWrap reported on Monday. Additional layoffs will follow at an unspecified later date as the company, now under the ownership of Skydance, aims for a $2 billion cut in overhead costs; prior to the sale, Paramount had already aimed for a $500 million savings cut.

That included a 15% workforce reduction that impacted areas including communications, advertising and Paramount Television Studios. It also included a separate round impacting 3.5% of its workforce, which it blamed on declines in its linear TV business.

As of the end of 2024, Paramount had approximately 18,600 employees globally across 32 countries and approximately 3,500 project-based staff. Meanwhile, Skydance has more than 500 employees, per its website.

Paramount president Jeff Shell previously warned such cuts would be coming this past August.

“Layoffs are always hard, but we don’t want to be a company that every quarter is laying people off,” Shell said at the time. “So it’s important to us to get done what we’re doing in one bigger thing and then be done with it.”

David Ellison, now CEO of Paramount Skydance after an $8 billion merger, is building a media empire spanning CBS, Paramount’s film and TV franchises, and potentially a stake in TikTok’s U.S. operations. The merger followed a $16 million settlement with Trump over allegations of CBS News bias. Skydance committed to diversity of viewpoints.

Earlier this month, Ellison named Bari Weiss editor-in-chief of CBS News, the news division of U.S. broadcaster CBS.