Hey there,
Here’s something that should stop you cold: Pixar’s Toy Story 5 is closing in on $1 billion at the global box office — and Disney still cut 150 jobs there this week. That’s not a struggling studio. That’s a studio making more money with fewer people on purpose.
This is Disney’s third major layoff round in 2026. And it’s happening across ESPN, National Geographic, and the film studios simultaneously. The trend doesn’t care how good the content is.
Meanwhile, the June jobs report came in with only 57,000 jobs added — barely half of what economists expected. There’s a lot to unpack.
Today: Disney’s structural shift cutting Pixar jobs mid-blockbuster, Intel trimming its fastest-growing division, and five fully remote-first companies actively building teams.
In This Issue:
- 🔥 The Big Story: Why Pixar laid off 150 people while Toy Story 5 approached $1 billion
- ⚡ Quick Hits: 4 major market movements this week
- 🏢 Companies Hiring: 5 remote-first companies actively building
- 🎯 Career Signal: The 34% wage gap nobody’s talking about
- ✅ Quick Win: The 15-minute research move that sets you apart in every interview
🔥 The Big Story: When Box Office Hits Don’t Save Jobs
Pixar just cut roughly 150 people while Toy Story 5 approaches $1 billion.
The headline. Disney announced its third major round of layoffs in 2026 on July 21 — cutting several hundred positions across ESPN, National Geographic, and its film studios, with Pixar Animation Studios bearing the heaviest impact. Toy Story 5, Pixar’s latest release, was nearing the $1 billion milestone when the cuts landed. The original film “Hoppers” underperformed earlier this year, adding pressure on the studio’s results, but Pixar leadership was explicit: these cuts reflect a deliberate shift toward fewer, higher-quality theatrical releases — not a one-film stumble.
The bigger picture. This is Disney’s third workforce reduction in 2026 under CEO Josh D’Amaro, following a January marketing consolidation and an April reduction of roughly 1,000 employees. The pattern is unmistakable: Disney is actively redesigning how many people it takes to produce a film, a show, or a sports broadcast — regardless of whether that content is winning or losing at the box office. Production volume is down by design. And when production volume drops, the teams built to support high-volume output get restructured first: production coordinators, operations staff, project managers, and specialized technical roles. The success of any single title doesn’t stop that math from running.
Why this matters: If your career is in entertainment, media, or any creative production field, this week’s news is a signal worth studying. The industry is moving toward smaller, higher-output teams building fewer, better things. That changes which roles are stable, which skills matter, and what “job security” actually means. Understanding the structural shift — not just the headline — puts you ahead of most candidates who only see the layoff numbers.
Read Disney’s investor relations overview →
Stat of the Week
57,000 → U.S. employers added just 57,000 jobs in June — barely half the 100K–115K economists projected — even as AI-driven job cuts in tech and finance accelerated simultaneously. (Bureau of Labor Statistics, July 2026)
See the full BLS Employment Situation report →
⚡ Quick Hits
Ladbrokes Parent Entain Is Cutting 500 Jobs — and Tax Policy Is the Trigger
UK gambling giant Entain — parent company of Ladbrokes, BetMGM, and bwin — announced plans to cut 500 positions globally, roughly 2% of its workforce, as part of an efficiency restructure led by new CFO Michael Snape. The cuts span finance, governance, product, and technology teams across multiple markets. The real driver: Chancellor Rachel Reeves raised the UK’s remote gaming duty from 21% to 40% starting April 2026, with another 25% general betting duty coming in 2027. Entain acknowledged the restructuring will offset only about half the tax burden. The bigger signal: government tax and regulatory policy is now a direct workforce-shaping force — and it doesn’t matter how profitable the underlying business is.
Check the numbers on Entain’s restructuring →
⚡ Quick Hit 2
Samsung Cut 839 US Jobs While Reporting a 19-Fold Profit Increase
Samsung Electronics America eliminated 839 positions in New Jersey and Texas on July 19 as the company relocated its U.S. consumer electronics headquarters from Englewood Cliffs, NJ to Plano, TX. The cuts hit sales and marketing in its smartphone and display divisions. The timing is striking: Samsung’s Q2 2026 profit jumped 19-fold year-over-year, driven by explosive AI chip demand — the same AI tailwinds that are crushing its consumer smartphone margins against Chinese competitors. The takeaway: AI hardware profitability isn’t protecting the consumer and marketing divisions from cuts. They’re operating in entirely different realities inside the same company.
See Samsung’s official newsroom →
⚡ Quick Hit 3
Intel Is Cutting Jobs in the Division Growing 22% a Year
Intel confirmed layoffs in its data center group on July 20, 2026 — the same division that posted $5.1 billion in quarterly revenue, up 22% year-over-year. CEO Lip-Bu Tan, leading Intel’s turnaround since March 2025, called it an organizational “realignment” to ensure the right roles and skills are in place for long-term success. Intel has cut tens of thousands of positions since 2024 even as its server CPU and AI chip revenue has climbed. The signal: revenue growth in a division doesn’t protect headcount inside it when leadership is restructuring the team to be AI-first and leaner by design.
⚡ Quick Hit 4
K&L Gates Cut 10% of Non-Lawyer Staff. Professional Services Isn’t Exempt.
Global law firm K&L Gates eliminated roughly 10% of its non-attorney workforce on July 21, 2026 — affecting paralegals, legal assistants, administrative staff, and operations roles across the firm. Legal support work sits squarely in AI’s path: tools like Harvey, Clio, and Lexis AI are automating document review, contract drafting, and legal research at scale. K&L Gates isn’t alone — several major firms have made similar cuts in 2026. The pattern: back-office and support roles in professional services — even in traditionally stable, high-margin sectors like law — are now under the same structural AI pressure as tech and finance.
See K&L Gates’ official site →
🏢 Companies Hiring Remote-Friendly Roles Right Now
The market is cutting — but it’s also building. Five companies with genuine remote-first cultures actively hiring this week:
GitLab — 50+ open roles across engineering, product, sales, and customer success
GitLab runs entirely on its own product, employs people in 60+ countries, and posted 29% revenue growth in fiscal 2026. Every policy, process, and expectation is written down in a public handbook — so you know exactly what you’re getting into before you apply. Current openings include backend engineers, product managers, solutions architects, and customer success roles. Remote is the default, not the exception.
Automattic — 1,445 employees in 82 countries, hiring across engineering, support, design, and operations
Automattic makes WordPress.com, WooCommerce, Tumblr, and Jetpack — tools used by a significant portion of the internet. Every employee chooses their hours, their location, and their setup. Their hiring process includes a paid trial project so you can evaluate the role as much as they evaluate you. Salary is location-independent.
👉 View open roles at Automattic
Atlassian — remote globally under its TEAM Anywhere policy, 10,000+ employees
Atlassian fully decoupled headcount from office location with its permanent TEAM Anywhere policy. The company makes Jira, Confluence, and Trello and is scaling its AI-powered product suite aggressively. Open roles span engineering, product, design, marketing, and customer experience — across time zones from the US to Australia to Europe.
👉 View open roles at Atlassian
Zapier — 600+ employees, fully remote since 2011, no offices anywhere
Zapier has been remote by default since it was founded. The company connects 9,000+ apps and is building out AI orchestration and agent workflows as its next platform bet. Open roles include engineering, product, design, support, and sales. Recognized as one of the most flexible employers globally in 2024.
Figma — hiring remotely across the US and Canada, plus global hubs in London, Berlin, Paris, Tokyo, and beyond
Figma has over 100 open roles across engineering, product design, sales, marketing, and business operations. The company is in an aggressive product expansion phase — launching Figma Make, Figma Weave, Figma Motion, and Figma Sites this year. Strong push into AI-powered design workflows. Remote-eligible roles span both technical and non-technical functions.
Know someone between jobs? Forward this section — it might be exactly what they need.
🎯 Career Signal: The 34% AI Wage Gap Is Expanding — and It’s Not Just for Engineers
PwC’s 2026 Global AI Jobs Barometer, which analyzed more than 1 billion job ads across six continents, found that workers with AI skills now command a 34.2% wage premium over peers without those skills — up sharply from 11% the prior year. The part most people miss: more than half of job postings requiring AI skills are outside of IT and computer science. Healthcare administrators, marketing managers, financial analysts, and legal coordinators are all now expected to demonstrate AI fluency as a baseline, not a differentiator. The signal for job seekers: if your AI skills aren’t visible on your resume and LinkedIn profile, you may already be in the 34%-lower-paid half of the market — regardless of your experience level or industry.
Read the full PwC AI Jobs Barometer →
🧠 Skill-Building Reads This Week
If you want to get ahead of where the job market is moving, these three sources are worth your time.
PwC 2026 Global AI Jobs Barometer — The Global Picture on AI Skills and Wages
The most comprehensive global data set on how AI is reshaping job demand, wages, and hiring priorities. The 2026 edition analyzes more than 1 billion job postings and reveals which sectors are growing headcount fastest among AI-exposed companies, why human skills like judgment and creativity are being demanded more (not less), and what the actual wage premium looks like by region and role type. Free download — no account required.
CompTIA State of Tech Workforce 2026 — Where Tech Jobs Are Actually Growing
CompTIA’s annual workforce report tracks real employer demand across millions of job postings. The 2026 edition documents a sixth consecutive month of rising tech job postings, identifies the specific roles and skills growing fastest (enterprise systems, AI analysis, cyber threat intelligence), and maps where the hiring is geographically concentrated. If you’re positioning for a tech or tech-adjacent role, this is the data you need to back up your career strategy.
BLS Career Outlook — Occupation Projections With No Agenda
The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes plain-language career guidance and 10-year job growth projections for every occupation, updated regularly with real government data. If you’re evaluating a career pivot, trying to understand which specific roles are projected to grow vs. decline, or just want ground-truth salary and demand data that isn’t filtered through a recruiting company’s interests — this is the source. Free, government-verified, no paywall.
✅ Quick Win This Week
Before your next job application, spend 15 minutes reading the company’s most recent earnings call transcript.
Public companies post earnings call transcripts on their investor relations pages — and what gets said on those calls is exactly where hiring priorities are hiding. The CEO and CFO will call out the company’s biggest bets, the divisions receiving investment, and the problems they’re trying to solve this quarter. If you walk into an interview knowing what the CEO flagged as the company’s most important challenge — and have a point of view on it — you’re not just another candidate. You’re someone who already understands the problem the hiring team is trying to fix. For private companies, check their most recent press releases, funding announcements, and product launch posts for the same signal. It’s a 15-minute move that almost nobody does.
What we’re watching: Intel’s Q2 2026 earnings call and whether the data center restructuring goes deeper, Disney’s next move on Pixar’s theatrical release slate, and whether the California state worker RTO mandate triggers broader public sector union action.
🎯 Bottom Line
This week’s theme isn’t panic — it’s precision. Disney, Intel, Samsung, Entain, and K&L Gates all cut jobs while operating profitable businesses. The signal isn’t distress. It’s optimization. Companies are actively designing toward fewer people doing higher-output work, and they’re doing it whether or not the quarter was good.
Tech occupation unemployment ran at 2.9% in June while the overall rate sat at 4.2%. That gap is not an accident — it’s the market repricing specific skills in real time. If you’re actively building toward a specific role, a specific company, or a specific skill set, this week’s noise is just noise. If you’re not, the signal is getting louder.
RemoteHunter.com has verified remote jobs and AI tools for resumes and cover letters built for the job market as it actually is — not as it was two years ago.
Until next week — keep building.
— The RH Team 🤙
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