Nike cutting 1,400 jobs in second layoff round of 2026

2 min readUpdated April 24, 2026

Nike $NKE announced about 1,400 layoffs this week, concentrated in its technology department, as part of the company's ongoing "Win Now" turnaround effort.

COO Venkatesh Alagirisamy disclosed the cuts in a memo to employees. Geographically, the job cuts touch employees in North America, Asia, and Europe, a footprint that adds up to slightly below 2% of the company's total workforce.

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"Collectively, these changes will result in a reduction of approximately 1,400 roles in global operations, with the majority in technology," Alagirisamy wrote. "These reductions are very hard for the teammates directly affected and for the teams around them, too."

Alagirisamy's memo outlined three operational shifts driving the reductions: merging the materials supply chain with existing footwear and apparel teams, consolidating technology work at two locations — the Beaverton, Oregon, campus and the Nike India Technology Center — and relocating certain Converse manufacturing and engineering functions to sites nearer to factory partners.

"This is not a new direction," Alagirisamy wrote. "It is the next phase of the work already underway."

The announcement marks Nike's second round of layoffs in 2026. Earlier this year, 775 positions were eliminated at domestic distribution centers as the company accelerated its automation efforts. Those cuts followed a summer 2025 reduction that touched less than 1% of corporate employees, and a larger February 2024 announcement in which Nike disclosed it would shed roughly 2% of its workforce — more than 1,600 people — according to Fox Business.

Since assuming the chief executive role in 2024, Elliott Hill has made reversing a prolonged sales decline his central mission, with a strategy built around steering Nike back toward sports like running and soccer and speeding up the cadence of new product introductions. Progress has been uneven. Guidance issued alongside its most recent quarterly results pointed to a 2% to 4% revenue decline in the current period, with China singled out as a particular drag — the market is projected to contract by around 20%.

After-hours trading showed a modest gain of roughly 0.5% for Nike shares. Zooming out, the stock is down more than 50% from where it stood three years ago, according to Reuters.

David Swartz, an analyst at Morningstar, offered a cautionary read on the cuts to Reuters, saying the announcement suggests Nike's underlying difficulties are more serious than the market had assumed. Swartz also pointed to a staffing imbalance he attributed to earlier leadership, which he said had responded to the company's struggles by enlarging its workforce — technology teams in particular.

Nike is cutting 1,400 more jobs, mostly in tech, in its second round of layoffs this year

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