Disney Cuts 1900 US Jobs

by Jordan Yerman | April 5, 2009 at 09:19 am

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Disney has announced a round of layoffs, eliminating 1900 jobs at California's Disneyland and Florida's Disney World.

The cuts amount to 2% of overall Disney staff, affecting office jobs for the most part.

Meanwhile, in order to maintain attendance, both theme parks have had to offer big discounts at the gate, as well as cheap vacation packages.

Disney said some 1,200 of the cuts were direct layoffs; the others were positions that the company will not fill. They came from both parks -- in Anaheim, Calif. and Orlando, Fla. -- as well as corporate headquarters, and they applied mostly to mangers and salaried employees, not workers in the parks.

A big part of the division's revamp was to combine the back-office functions of both parks. Disney had contemplated such reorganization for several years but the move was accelerated by the economic downturn.