A Massive Texas Company Now Cuts 600 Jobs in California

May 17, 2024

A massive Texas company now cuts 600 jobs in California due to a significant drop in sales revenue and demand, per its filing.

EV giant Tesla said in a filing this week that it’s cutting about 600 more jobs at its manufacturing facilities and engineering offices in Fremont and Palo Alto, California.

CEO Elon Musk told employees in a memo in April that the company would cut more than 10% of its global workforce but hasn’t given a precise number.

The restructuring at Tesla follows a drop in first-quarter sales, reports CNBC.

As part of Tesla’s massive restructuring, the electric-vehicle maker notified the California Employment Development Department this week that it’s cutting approximately 600 more employees at its manufacturing facilities and engineering offices between Fremont and Palo Alto.

The latest round of layoffs eliminated roles across the board — from entry-level positions to directors — and hit an array of departments, impacting factory workers, software developers and robotics engineers.

The cuts were reported in a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification, or WARN, Act filing that CNBC obtained through a public records request.

Facing both weakening demand for Tesla electric vehicles and increased competition, the company has been slashing its headcount since at least January.

CEO Elon Musk told employees in a memo in April that the company would cut more than 10% of its global workforce, which totaled 140,473 employees at the end of 2023.

Previous filings revealed that Tesla would cut more than 6,300 jobs across California; Austin, Texas; and Buffalo, New York.

Musk said on Tesla’s quarterly earnings call on April 23 that the company had built up a 25% to 30% “inefficiency” over the past several years, implying the layoffs underway could impact tens of thousands more employees than the 10% number would suggest.

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Other Economy News Today

Applications for unemployment benefits now surge to new highs, a sign that the white-hot labor market is starting to cool off.

First-time applications for unemployment benefits rose last week to 231,000, the highest level since August, per CNN.

Thursday’s data also showed that the number of continuing claims, or applications from people who have filed for unemployment for at least one week, was 1.78 million.

That’s an increase of 17,000 from the prior week, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The latest numbers come less than a week after the monthly jobs report showed the US economy added just 175,000 positions in April, less than economists expected and a steep drop-off from prior months.

US employers have now added an average of 245,500 jobs per month, versus 2023’s 251,000-per-month average.

Still, hiring remains strong. Although the unemployment rate ticked up to 3.9% last month, it’s the 27th consecutive month that the jobless rate has held under 4%, matching a streak last seen in the late 1960s.

Weekly jobless claims data tends to be volatile but, while one week’s worth of data “does not a trend make,” said Chris Rupkey, chief economist at Fwdbonds.

“We can no longer be sure that calm seas lie ahead for the US economy if today’s weekly jobless claims are any indication.”

“Company layoffs are picking up, hinting at caution on the part of companies as they weigh the outlook for the second half of the year,” he wrote in a note Thursday.

The Federal Reserve has been battling inflation by raising its key lending rate in the hopes of slowing the economy.

While the labor market has so far resisted those efforts, remaining white hot for the past 18 months despite 11 rate hikes from the central bank, Fed Chair Jerome Powell said last week that demand has “cooled from its extremely high level of a couple of years ago.”

Ian Shepherdson at Pantheon Economics said in a note Thursday: “We’d need to see at least a month of elevated readings to convince us that the trend really has turned.”

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Also Read: A Giant Company Now Announces Unexpected Layoffs in Virginia

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