Elon Musk Wants To Cut 10% of Tesla Jobs, Report Says

Tesla boss Elon Musk told executives on Thursday that the company must cut its workforce by 10% and pause hiring globally, according to Reuters. Musk apparently cited a "super bad feeling" about the economy as his reasoning.

The electric carmaker had 99,290 employees worldwide at the end of 2021. It's also no stranger to job cuts, having laid off 7% of its workforce in 2019 and 9% in 2018. Workers were also furloughed in April 2020.

When asked about Musk's economic prediction on Friday, President Joe Biden noted that Ford is investing in building a billion new electric vehicles and adding 6,000 new employees in the Midwest.

"Lots of luck on his trip to the moon," Biden said of Musk, referring to the CEO's spacefaring ambitions through his other company, SpaceX.

Musk responded to Biden's comment in a tweet: "Thanks Mr President!" with a link to a NASA press release about SpaceX getting selected to develop a commercial human lander to touch down on the lunar surface.

The Tesla CEO's reported economic proclamation comes after he declared that Tesla workers who wish to work remotely must put in a minimum of 40 hours a week at the office, as seen in an apparent leaked email earlier this week.

Tesla's shares dipped around 8.5% on Friday. It's unclear if Musk's gloomy economic outlook will affect his deal to buy Twitter for $44 billion, but that purchase cleared the US Federal Trade Commission review on Friday.

Tesla no longer maintains an active public relations department, so there was no one available for comment.

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