Tesla Shares Drop by 8.5% as Musk Announces Hiring Freeze and Job Cuts

Tesla shares dropped 8.5% on Friday in light of news that the CEO, Elon Musk, plans to freeze hiring and cut jobs by 10%, according to a Reuters report Friday. 

Reuters said that the Tesla and SpaceX CEO emailed Tesla executives saying he had a “super bad feeling” about the economy. In the same email, he made it clear that Tesla needs to freeze hiring and cut jobs. 

In the email, Musk made it very clear that the 10% of workers that will be laid off are salaried employees, and that factory hourly workers have nothing to fear. Here is the email, reported by Whole Mars Catalog on Twitter. 

This news comes just a few days after another Musk email to executives asking employees to cease remote working and return back to their office for a minimum of 40 hours per week or leave the company. 

Here is Whole Mars Catalog once again showing Musk’s email. 

Whole Mars Catalog also quote tweeted their own tweet and asked Musk if he could provide any more comments to employees who believe that working from an office 40 hours a week is an antiquated concept. 

Musk responded saying: “They should pretend to work somewhere else.”

In addition, Musk responded to another tweet that talked about the benefits of working at Tesla where there is no “blue/white distinction” and that everyone is “all hand on deck on the factor floor” saying: “Everyone eats same food, uses same restrooms, etc – no executive chef or other ivory tower stuff. There shouldn’t be this workers vs management two-class system. Everyone is a worker.” 

According to its annual financial filing, Tesla and its subsidiaries employed 99,290 people around the world as of the end of 2021.

Tesla shares have dropped by more than 25% this year amid Musk’s Twitter takeover, Covid lockdowns in China, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and a broader sell-off in tech. All of these have had some effect on Tesla’s stock price. 

Despite Musk’s call to layoff employees, Tesla reported an outstanding Q1, saying “the first quarter of 2022 was another record quarter for Tesla by several measures such as revenues, vehicle deliveries, operating profit and an operating margin of over 19%." 

However, those numbers aren’t good enough for onlookers as they are criticizing Musk for attempting to buy a social media platform for $44 billion, but still be willing to lay off roughly 10% of salaried employees. 

BrooklynDad_Defiant, a verified Twitter user, took to the social media platform to voice his disdain. 

Author: Tyler Irvin

Related Articles