- Title: Musk feels 'super bad' about economy, needs to cut 10% of Tesla jobs
- Date: 3rd June 2022
- Summary: SHANGHAI, CHINA (FILE - JANUARY 7, 2020) (Reuters) TESLA CEO ELON MUSK WALKING ONTO STAGE AND DANCING VARIOUS OF MUSK DANCING ON STAGE MUSK WALKING TO PODIUM TESLA MODEL 3 ON DISPLAY TESLA LOGO TESLA MODEL 3 IN WHITE ON DISPLAY TESLA LOGO ON STEERING WHEEL INTERIOR OF TESLA MODEL 3
- Embargoed: 17th June 2022 10:56
- Keywords: Elon Musk Scott Farquar Tesla jobs
- Location: VARIOUS
- City: VARIOUS
- Country: USA
- Topics: Company News Markets,Economic Events,United States
- Reuters ID: LVA003249903062022RP1
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text:Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk told top managers he had a "super bad feeling" about the economy and that the electric carmaker needed to cut staff by about 10%, according to an internal email seen by Reuters.
The email, titled "pause all hiring worldwide", was sent to Tesla executives on Thursday, (June 3) underscoring an increasingly gloomy global economic outlook with prices soaring and war in Ukraine passing its 100th day.
The message from Musk came shortly after Jamie Dimon, chairman and chief executive of JPMorgan Chase , said the U.S. economy faced challenges akin to a "hurricane".
The message came two days after the world's richest man told employees to return to the workplace or leave the company.
On Tuesday, Musk told staff to return to the workplace or leave the company, a demand that has already faced pushback in Germany where the company has a new factory.
"Everyone at Tesla is required to spend a minimum of 40 hours in the office per week," Musk wrote in that email.
"If you don't show up, we will assume you have resigned."
Musk's comments were ridiculed in a series of tweets from Australia tech billionaire and Atlassian co-founder Scott Farquhar, who said the directive was like "something out of the 1950s."
Musk has warned in recent weeks about the risk of a recession, but his email ordering a hiring freeze and staff cuts was the most direct and high-profile message of its kind from the head of an automaker.
In late May, when asked by a Twitter user whether the economy was approaching a recession, Musk said, "Yes, but this is actually a good thing. It has been raining money on fools for too long. Some bankruptcies need to happen."
So far, demand for Tesla cars and other electric vehicles has remained strong and many of the traditional indicators of a downturn - including increasing dealer inventories and incentives in the United States - have not materialized.
But Tesla has struggled to restart production at its Shanghai factory after COVID-19 lockdowns forced costly outages at the plant.
Before Musk's warning, Tesla had about 5,000 job postings on LinkedIn from sales in Tokyo and engineers at its new Berlin gigafactory to deep learning scientists in Palo Alto. It had scheduled an online hiring event for Shanghai on June 9 on its WeChat channel.
Tesla employed around 100,000 people at the end of 2021, according to its annual SEC filing.
(Production: Toyin Amusan) - Copyright Holder: FILE REUTERS (CAN SELL)
- Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2022. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
- Usage Terms/Restrictions: None