Google layoffs expand to YouTube, which reportedly has 7,000+ employees

Following last week’s layoffs across hardware, Assistant, engineering, and ads, YouTube is cutting around 100 roles as part of a restructuring to Creator management and operations. 

According to Tubefilter, YouTube is localizing its Creator management teams on a per-country basis, while centralizing other teams so that there’s one focused on music and another responsible for sports/media/film/TV. Support teams are also being split into Creator-facing and end users.

Today’s report says no Creators will lose support, while the restructuring should let YouTube better scale for international growth.

Meanwhile, the New York Times reported today that YouTube employs 7,173 people. In Q3 of 2023, Alphabet reported 182,381 employees.

Ad revenue has been slowing down in the past year or so. The most noticeable user-facing impact of this has been the crackdown on ad blockers. YouTube has encouraged users to disable those extensions and watch ads or subscribe to YouTube Premium, which has seen price increases. Another big area of focus for the video site has been YouTube TV and subscriptions with NFL Sunday Ticket.

YouTube’s other big focus as of late has been introducing generative AI features for Creators and viewers. 

More broadly, Google is undergoing additional layoffs after cutting 12,000 jobs at the start of last year. This round is being accompanied by structural changes as seen with YouTube, and hardware moving to a functional organization.