Tesla laid off 14,000 employees globally

According to The Guardian, Tesla will lay off more than 10% of its global workforce, equivalent to at least 14,000 positions. CEO Elon Musk admitted that this was an extremely difficult decision.

Musk said that in recent years Tesla has grown rapidly. According to its annual report, Tesla employs 140,473 people. This leads to "overlapping of job roles and functions in certain sectors".

Even though he doesn't want to, Musk believes that cutting staff is necessary to help the company streamline, innovate and move towards the next growth cycle.

The move to lay off employees was made by Tesla after reporting a decrease in the number of deliveries in the first quarter of 2024, about 13% lower than market expectations. This is Tesla's first drop in deliveries in nearly four years.

According to Tesla, it was caused by unforeseen factors such as attacks on shipping ships in the Red Sea and an arson attack at their European factory. However, the figures also show that global demand is weakening.

Musk dismissed comments that the decline in sales was due to his divisive personality. He said that this was a "difficult quarter for all companies", Chinese rival BYD also faced a similar situation.

Tesla has manufacturing facilities in California, Nevada, Texas and New York in the US as well as factories in Germany and China.

In fact, Wall Street is increasingly expressing concerns about the company. This year, Tesla's stock price has lost a third of its value even as major stock indexes hit record highs. Tesla's capitalization was blown away by $94 billion in the first 2 weeks of 2024.

Samuel Daniel

Update 16 April 2024