layoff

Eyo-Dae Kim and Susan Kim attended the University of Southern California decades ago, two international students with little money and no family in the U.S. On Friday, their son, Beong-Soo Kim, stood before an Alumni Park crowd and was formally installed as the 13th president of their alma mater.

“It is wonderful to have you here, Dad, facing the same library where you and Mom studied together at USC,” Kim, 53, said to his father, who took doctoral courses in economics. Kim’s late mother fled during the Korean War and earned a USC master’s degree.

“They certainly would never have imagined, as international students, that this day could possibly come,” Kim had said earlier.

In a wide-ranging interview before the event, Kim — who was appointed in February after holding an interim presidential role — said he leads USC at a time of promise and deep challenges:

The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, leased and operated by USC, will be a showcase site for the 2028 Olympics. A recent $200-million gift is fueling a university-wide push into artificial intelligence. USC admitted 12.6% of first-year applicants this fall for sought-after slots.

Beong-Soo Kim was formally installed as USC’s 13th president during an investiture ceremony Friday.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

Yet he faces steep hurdles. The former federal prosecutor who spent five years as USC’s general counsel inherited a deficit of more than $200 million. Among his first actions, Kim approved the layoffs of more than 900 workers and ordered deep cost-saving measures. USC is still recovering from years of scandal and controversy that scarred its national reputation, including a $1.1-billion payout to settle sexual abuse allegations against a campus gynecologist, its involvement in the “Varsity Blues” admissions bribery scheme and its handling of pro-Palestinian protests.

Then there is Trojan football.

Fans chanted this month for the firing of football coach Lincoln Riley — after years of underachieving — though the Trojans have defeated Washington and Penn State after an Oregon loss.

Although fans and analysts have soured at times on Riley — whose pay exceeds $11 million and whose reported buyout is about $70 million — Kim declined to say whether USC could afford a coaching change, saying, “We’re not thinking about that.”

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Amid fan chants to fire Trojan football coach Lincoln Riley, USC President Beong-Soo Kim declined to say whether USC could afford a coaching change, saying “we are laser-focused on the next game.”

“We are laser-focused on the next game, and then the game after that, and really having the best possible season that we can have in football,” he said.

After the stinging rounds of layoffs, Kim said, the university expects to “significantly exceed” the roughly $30-million surplus he forecast for USC earlier this year during his state-of-the-university speech, though final numbers are pending.

In his speech, Kim said that public trust in universities has declined and “we must regain trust by earning it.” USC is among the elite universities targeted last year by the Trump administration over alleged campus antisemitism, though it has not faced major federal funding freezes or lawsuits as the UC system has.

On Friday, deans and faculty in academic regalia processed into Alumni Park, where the Trojan Marching Band accompanied the national anthem as temperatures climbed toward the 90s during the nearly two-hour ceremony.

USC religious life dean Varun Soni opened an invocation by describing the cello’s sound post — a small wooden piece called its “soul” in Italian and French — and comparing it to the soul of a university. Kim, a cellist, later joined USC Thornton School of Music students to play “Prelude,” the first movement of Grieg’s “Holberg Suite,” Op. 40, as Kaufman School of Dance students performed.

Morton Schapiro, Northwestern’s president emeritus and a former USC dean, represented visiting academic delegates and praised Kim’s “creativity, character and commitment to community” before Suzanne Nora Johnson, chair of the Board of Trustees, formally installed Kim. Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and humanist blessings closed the ceremony. In the afternoon, a “Trojan Family celebration” in McCarthy Quad was scheduled to feature food stalls and performances by singer-songwriters Aloe Blacc, a USC alumnus, and Allen Stone.

Money, medicine and priorities

When he took over as interim president in 2025, upon the departure of Carol Folt, Kim immediately confronted the university’s financial crisis. The campus had long spent more than it brought in, an imbalance driven by rising athletics costs, pandemic expenses and major legal settlements. A weak year for USC’s health system deepened the shortfall. Kim maintained a hiring pause, stopped merit raises and took “a hard look at a lot of our administrative expenses and our operations,” he told The Times.

Keck Medicine of USC took a significant hit in the layoffs after running a deficit in the tens of millions in recent years. Last month, dozens of layoffs took place at the Viterbi School of Engineering.

Kim said Keck’s performance “has been good, but it can get better.” The health system is “making very positive progress” to cut expenses while focusing on “patient care, patient quality.”

Across campus, he credited staff and faculty with “stepping up, asking how can we do more with less.”

USC is also challenging a faculty union before the National Labor Relations Board. Non-tenure-track faculty voted in June to join United Faculty-UAW, with about 70% in favor. USC has asked the labor board to review the decision that allowed the vote, arguing the union is too broad. Faculty leafleted Friday during Kim’s event.

Kim said he wants USC to build strong partnerships with Los Angeles industries, including entertainment, biotechnology, sports and “the new space economy.”

He cautioned in his speech that “great universities do not become greater by trying to do everything.”

During the interview, he did not say which university programs need to shrink but said such decisions will come through a strategic plan that will “engage the whole community.”

“One of the things that I frankly pride myself on as a university president is that I readily admit that I don’t have all the answers, and certainly not the best answers,” he said.

Beong-Soo Kim speaks at USC’s commencement in May.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Admissions

A pressing debate — particularly within the University of California system — is whether standardized tests should be required for admissions. Many of the nation’s most elite institutions have recently turned away from test-blind or test-optional admission policies. UC, which does not consider SAT scores in admissions, is reviewing whether to resume SAT and ACT requirements.

Kim said USC, which is test-optional, is studying the issue too. USC considers SAT and ACT scores if applicants submit them but does not require them.

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As the University of California evaluates whether to reintroduce SAT and standardized testing requirements for admission, USC President Beong-Soo Kim said USC is also looking at the question. He said USC, which is test-optional, has not made a final decision.

“It’s absolutely something that has been under discussion, particularly with respect to STEM students,” he said, referring to science, technology, engineering and math majors. He cautioned that no final decision has been made and that the new provost, David Madigan, will be looking at the issue.

Kim said UC’s test-blind policy is “one of the contextual factors that we have to consider.” Many California students who plan to apply to UC skip the tests, and many of them also apply to USC, he said.

USC said last year it would keep weighing applicants’ family ties to the university despite a state ban on legacy and donor preferences. In 2024, while the ban was pending, USC said it would “comply with state law” if it were signed. Schools that keep the preferences are listed publicly as out of compliance and must report more admissions data to the state.

Kim said USC chose to keep “considering whether someone is a member of the Trojan family” as one of many factors. He said he is “actually quite proud” that USC maintained its “holistic admissions practices” in a way that “provides more transparency about our admissions.”

Image and trust

Legacy preferences have fed a stereotype of USC as a college for the wealthy and well connected. Kim disputed that image.

He pointed to USC’s transfer students, Pell Grant recipients and first-generation students. USC opens its doors to “so many people in California, throughout the country, and throughout the world,” he said.

Still, Kim acknowledged that trust in education has fallen, though he said that trust in American institutions “across the board has been declining.”

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USC violates state law by considering legacy and donor ties in admissions, a practice President Beong-Soo Kim defended as part of a holistic review while touting the university’s transparency in reporting admissions data to the state.

“Some might have to do with events from several years ago,” he said.

He did not say which events, though USC has had its share. As general counsel, Kim helped steer it through the aftermath of the national Varsity Blues admissions bribery scandal and the sex abuse payout to former patients of campus gynecologist George Tyndall, the largest in higher education history.

His answer to falling trust has been the Open Dialogue Project, which he launched in October 2025 to bring clashing views to campus. Guests have included National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya, former ACLU President Nadine Strossen and legal scholar Jonathan Turley.

In September, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression gave USC its top “green light” rating for several speech policies. After the group recalculated its college free speech rankings, USC rose from 198th to 37th out of 261 schools.

White House pressure

Last fall, the Trump administration invited USC and eight other universities to sign a higher education compact offering favorable access to federal research grants. Signers would cap international undergraduates at 15%, require the SAT or ACT and freeze tuition for five years.

USC rejected the compact last October — about two weeks after the administration offered it.

Some faculty viewed USC’s initial reluctance to reject the overture as a sign it was unwilling to openly challenge Trump’s education demands. They also point to USC’s closure of its university-wide Office of Inclusion and Diversity last year amid a federal anti-DEI push and its removal of pages for cultural heritage months from its “Culture Journey” website earlier this year.

Kim disagreed that USC bends quickly to the White House.

“It would have been highly presumptuous for me just to make a rash decision about what we were going to do without listening,” he said of the compact.

International students have also faced pressures, as the government restricts some visa programs and significantly increases costs for others.

About 26% of USC students are international, with 15% of the undergraduate population coming from other nations. Kim said international students “have been part of USC for decades” and called their presence “a win-win.”

AI risks

USC is also leaning into artificial intelligence, with a $200-million gift from Nvidia board member Mark Stevens and his wife, Mary Stevens, meant to infuse AI across the campus and recruit AI researchers.

But leaders of OpenAI and Anthropic have warned that the technology’s fast development poses serious risks to jobs and human existence.

“We have to take those warnings very seriously,” Kim said. Universities, he said, can help clarify what it means for AI to be “aligned” and “safe.”

Kim said USC wants to make sure its students “are leading in terms of how to use it ethically, how to use it morally.”

The future

On July 14, 2028, the Coliseum — USC’s campus-adjacent home stadium — will share the Olympics’ opening ceremony with SoFi Stadium in Inglewood.

Kim said he hopes Olympic visitors will see “a university that has an incredible Olympic tradition,” but also one whose reach goes well beyond sports.

The Games will also bring alumni and students “from across the globe,” he said. “I think that’s going to make for a very magical moment.”

Netflix plans a substantial round of layoffs as the streaming giant faces rising competition and pressure to retain its subscribers, according to people familiar with the job cuts.

The cuts are expected to affect 5% of the company‘s workforce, which could be 800 employees, according to one of the sources who was not authorized to comment. The job losses will affect the creative team including those working on features, the source said.

Netflix declined to comment. The planned cuts are believed to be the biggest at the Los Gatos company since 2022. The news was first reported by news outlet Puck.

Netflix has been under scrutiny from investors over how much time its subscribers spend on the streaming service. View hours rose only about 2% in the first half of 2026 compared with a year earlier, even as content spending climbed.

“Overall we’re not growing as fast as I want us to, and we’re working on making that move faster,” said Netflix co-Chief Executive Ted Sarandos at the Bloomberg Screentime event last week.

Netflix has noted how engagement can be measured in different ways. For example, its investment in live programming helps spur significant subscription sign-ups, even though it represents a small percentage of watch time on the streaming service, the company has said.

But some investors remain skeptical about the company’s future growth. Rival YouTube remains the leader in streaming viewing hours in the U.S. on TVs, representing 14.2% versus Netflix’s 7.8% in July, according to Nielsen. Netflix stock has also declined 43% compared to a year ago. On Friday, the stock closed at $70.30, down about 2%.

Netflix last conducted major layoffs in 2022 after the streamer reported subscriber losses for the first time in more than a decade. In May that year, the company laid off 150 workers and dozens of contractors and part-time workers in areas including its social media teams. The following month, it laid off 300 people or roughly 3% of its staff.

Recently, Netflix made changes to its games division. In August, the company closed its Hollywood-based gaming studio Night School and said it was in the process of closing its Helsinki-based gaming studio Moonloot.

WASHINGTON — Sipping tea from beer mugs with his co-workers, Kyle Bos listed the ways his life is changing.

Bos has two daughters, with a third due in January. At the grocery store, five items cost as much as a full cart once did. And on Wednesday, Bos and nearly 1,400 other people were laid off from their jobs as the Navistar truck factory in southwestern Ohio shut down.

The layoffs — occurring three days before President Trump’s rally Saturday at a nearby high school — were large enough to essentially erase an entire year of job growth in the greater Dayton area. And they are one reason why Bos, 30, plans to spend the final weeks before the November election canvassing votes for Democrats.

Asked how many times he voted for Trump, Bos held up three tattooed fingers. But he said he’s done with the president.

“Something has to change politically in this country,” said Bos, a member of the United Auto Workers who identifies as a centrist.

A Trump campaign stop

This election is a test for the working-class coalition that lifted Trump into the White House again and gave majorities to Republicans in the House and Senate. The outcome will be decided in places like Dayton, which once sprouted factories but shed about half of its 90,000 factory jobs since 1990 after the North American Free Trade Agreement and trade with China made it cheaper to buy auto parts from abroad.

Trump’s blunt talk and status as a celebrity businessman initially helped him in and around Dayton, where some said politics as usual had failed them. But voters this year are disgruntled about inflation and the war in Iran.

An Ohio race could help determine control of the Senate. Republican Sen. Jon Husted is facing a challenge from Democratic former Sen. Sherrod Brown, who is trying to harness that disenchantment as he attempts a comeback two years after losing his seat.

Americans increasingly blame Trump for the high cost of living, with just 17% approving of his handling of the issue, according to a new AP-NORC poll. Trump didn’t talk about grocery prices or gas prices or layoffs at his Saturday night rally in Vandalia, part of what he says will be a 32-day marathon of rallies to try to convince the public that the economy is better than they think.

“The fake news media, they refuse to talk about our record-setting numbers. So tonight, if you don’t mind, I’m going to do it myself,” he said at the rally.

Trump largely has scoffed at concerns about affordability, but is promising to give people $5,000 checks if Republicans win the House and Senate next month— something Bos said he found offensive.

“It feels like a bribe, a slap in the face, and, like, that we’re all ignorant,” Bos said.

Factory work moved abroad

As steady paychecks vanished in the 1990s, drug addiction and crime increased. Things seemed to hit bottom after the 2008 financial crisis, prompting Phil Plummer, who was then Montgomery County sheriff, to enter politics.

“My jail was 40% drug addicts, 50% mental health patients, 10% criminals,” said Plummer, the Montgomery County GOP chairman who has been a Republican state representative since 2019. “We got it upside down — that’s what drove me to the statehouse.”

Plummer is now on the ballot for the Ohio state Senate and thinks Trump is what keeps the GOP’s coalition of businesses and working-class families together.

In recent years, the local economy has improved as the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base steadily added government workers. The base has drawn new aerospace companies to the area such as Joby Aviation, Electra and the Sierra Nevada Corp.

“In economic development, it takes time, and you have got to give it a little bit of time to bake, and then once it does, then you’re going to have something special,” said Jeff Hoagland, chief of the Dayton Development Coalition.

Demand at plant fell

Trump pointed to the $850-million investment by aircraft maker Electra — along with a new project in Ohio from Stellantis and a Friday announcement from Bayer for a $2.2-billion drug plant near Columbus — as evidence that his policies were creating jobs.

But at the Navistar plant, Trump’s broad tariffs never boosted demand, and the plant’s former owner, International Motors, chose to offload the facility.

Trump’s major legislative achievement, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, contributed little to people’s take-home pay, even as it temporarily stripped taxes from tips and overtime.

“We weren’t getting a lot of overtime because of the economy,” said Marianne Donnelly, who drove a forklift at the factory. “There just wasn’t any to be had, very little to be had.”

Laid-off workers like Donnelly say they expect to be rehired in six to 12 months by Roshel, a Canadian manufacturer of armored vehicles, which is buying the plant. Roshel said in a statement that it’s “working with everyone involved not only to protect the current workforce, but to more than double it over the coming years through a phased process.”

Laid-off workers looking for hope

On the Monday before the layoffs, Morgan Hughes and JoJo Burkhard were knocking on doors in Kettering, a Dayton suburb. They were trying to convince union members and retirees to vote for Democrats.

The Navistar job had helped Hughes, 35, buy a house at age 21 and work alongside her father. Burkhard said inflation had made it easier to swing voters to their side.

“It isn’t a hard pitch at all,” she said. “And even if they don’t want to stay Democratic long term, they’ll at least give the candidates a chance this election, which could be a turning point for us.”

After a morning of talking to voters, the pair settled down at a Chinese restaurant for some pot stickers, and the weight of the week hit them.

Burkhard cracked open a fortune cookie and tears began to well up. The layoffs meant no work for her, her boyfriend and her mother — and the words in small print almost seemed prophetic.

Her fortune read: “You’ll find your inner strength to overcome challenges.”

Boak writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Seung Min Kim in Vandalia contributed to this report.

Walt Disney Co. laid off nearly 300 workers this week, the latest wave in an industry-wide consolidation that continues to reverberate throughout Southern California.

Several people close to the Burbank entertainment giant confirmed this week’s cuts, which came as Disney separately offered early retirement packages for older workers. The voluntary separation program is underway, and the number of executives who will exit later this year has not been determined, one of the knowledgeable sources said Friday.

The layoffs this week largely affected the human resources and the technology divisions — a belt-tightening that comes as Disney Chief Executive Josh D’Amaro seeks to put his imprint on the sprawling company and sharpen its focus.

D’Amaro took the reins from former CEO Bob Iger in March, and the former parks chief has begun to organize the company around a “One Disney” approach to break down corporate silos that sprouted with each large acquisition, including Disney’s 2019 takeover of much of 21st Century Fox.

Disney also has been working for the past year to make Disney+ the company’s central streaming hub. As part of that effort, executives have begun to diminish the Hulu service and brand, which sprung to life nearly 20 years ago.

Disney employees are bracing for further cuts. Many expect a significant television division restructuring early next year, which could result in hundreds of layoffs, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Disney’s legal government affairs department also will be downsized, according to a recent internal memo Disney Chief Legal Officer Horacio Gutierrez.

A Disney spokesperson declined to comment.

Disney President Dana Walden, during a Thursday appearance at Bloomberg News’ Screentime media conference in Hollywood, acknowledged the industry turmoil.

Traditional studios and TV networks have shed tens of thousands workers in recent years after the streaming bubble burst and twin labor strikes paused projects.

Production workers in Los Angeles have felt a double-whammy as other states and countries have offered generous tax subsidies that have pulled productions from L.A.

Separately, Warner Bros. Discovery workers are anxious that David Ellison’s planned takeover of their company next week will ultimately result in hundreds of layoffs as the tech scion and his team hunt for $6 billion in cost cuts that they promised investors and prospective debt holders.

The merger will leave the combined company, which will go by the name Skydance, with more than $80 billion in debt.

Walden suggested her company’s cuts would be more modest. She said restructurings were necessary as companies adapt to changing consumption patterns, which have eroded the more lucrative TV economics of yesteryear.

“There is a need to constantly evaluate how you’re structured,” Walden said. “It is extremely painful. We’ve exited colleagues who I’ve worked with for most of my career and it is, in many ways, a harsh reality.”

She described Disney’s voluntary retirement program as a “generous” program to give “long-tenured executives agency and the opportunity to make their own decisions around whether the timing was right to leave.”

“This evolution, it will never stop,” Walden added. “Technology set their sights on our business, and we must survive, and thrive and grow. And that’s what we’re going to do.”