How many employees does Disney have? Headcount by year from its 10-K

This page is for sellers sizing Disney as an account, analysts comparing media and leisure companies, and anyone who needs a citable headcount. Every figure comes from Disney's annual report on Form 10-K. Disney's fiscal year ends on the Saturday closest to September 30, so fiscal 2025 ended September 27, 2025. The fiscal 2026 10-K, covering the year to October 3, 2026, is due in November 2026.

Disney employees by year

Disney reorganized its corporate structure when it bought 21st Century Fox in 2019, so the fiscal 2018 report was filed by the former parent, now TWDC Enterprises 18 Corp., under a different SEC registration. The business is the same.

What the number includes

The fiscal 2025 10-K says: "The Company employed approximately 231,000 people as of fiscal year end 2025, of which approximately 172,000 were employed in the U.S. and approximately 59,000 were employed outside the U.S. Our global workforce comprises approximately 76% full-time and 16% part-time employees, with another 8% being seasonal employees."

• Part-time and seasonal staff count. Together they're about 24% of the total, roughly 55,000 people (our calculation from the rounded figures). The 10-K doesn't say where they work, but it notes that theme park attendance and resort occupancy rise and fall with vacation travel.
• Many employees are unionized. The 10-K says "a significant number of employees", including theme park employees and "writers, directors, actors and production personnel", are covered by collective bargaining agreements, and some employees outside the US are represented by works councils or trade unions.
• One company-wide figure. The 10-K doesn't split the count by business or define which entities it covers. Two scope facts help: Disney consolidates the Asia theme parks in its financial statements, and Star India stopped being consolidated on November 14, 2024, when it moved into a joint venture in which Disney holds a 37% share.
• It's a year-end snapshot, at the end of September or early October, after the summer peak.

What changed and why

• Fiscal 2019: up 22,000. Disney acquired Twenty-First Century Fox on March 20, 2019, and the count rose from about 201,000 to about 223,000.
• Fiscal 2020 and 2021: down 33,000. The fiscal 2020 10-K says that because of COVID-19 the company limited hiring to critical roles and used furloughs and reductions in force: "the employment of approximately 32,000 employees primarily at Parks, Experiences and Products will terminate in the first half of fiscal 2021." Another 37,000 employees were on furlough on October 3, 2020. By October 2021 the count was about 190,000.
• Fiscal 2022: up 30,000. The 10-K doesn't explain the headcount, but reports revenues up 23%, to $82.7 billion, with service revenues rising "due to increased revenues at our theme parks and resorts." The seasonal share rose from 5% to 7%.
• Fiscal 2023: a reorganization. Disney split its media business into Entertainment and Sports segments alongside Experiences, and recorded $357 million of severance within restructuring and impairment charges. Headcount still rose about 5,000.
• Fiscal 2025: international down 3,000. The count outside the US fell from about 62,000 to about 59,000, the year Star India left the consolidated group. The 10-K doesn't link the two or say how many people moved.

Revenue per employee

For fiscal 2025: $94,425 million divided by 231,000 is about $408,800. Counting part-time and seasonal staff as whole people pulls the figure down compared with a company of full-time desk workers, so compare Disney with other parks and media companies, not with software firms.

Disney doesn't split employees by segment. Its fiscal 2025 segment revenues were $42,466 million for Entertainment (film, television, streaming), $17,672 million for Sports (mainly ESPN) and $36,156 million for Experiences (parks, resorts, cruises and consumer products), before $1,869 million of eliminations between them.

Selling to a company of Disney's size

General guidance, not a description of Disney's internal process.

Disney is three businesses with very different workforces: studios and networks staffed by creative and technical professionals, ESPN, and a parks and cruise business with a large hourly, part-time and seasonal workforce.

• Pick the segment first. A guest-experience tool for Experiences and a production workflow tool for Entertainment have different owners, budgets and buying cycles.
• Price for the frontline. With about a quarter of staff part-time or seasonal, per-seat pricing for frontline tools gets scrutinized; scheduling, training and communication tools are judged per location and per shift.
• Expect union and works council review for anything that changes how represented employees work or are monitored.
• Use the 10-K's vocabulary. It names the programs a vendor can support, such as Disney Aspire education assistance, and the priorities of each segment.

For a research routine on accounts this large, see how to research an account, and how to find decision makers to reach the owner in the right segment. For a streaming peer, compare Netflix's headcount.

Next step: compare Disney with other studios, networks and streamers on our list of the largest media companies.