Tesla is getting rid of 3,332 jobs in California and 2,688 jobs in Austin, Texas, according to notices filed as part of the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act.
This is all part of a bigger change that Tesla announced last week.
In 2021, Tesla’s boss Elon Musk moved the company’s main office from California to Austin, Texas.
Musk said in a message to employees last week that Tesla was cutting over 10% of its workers globally because of lower sales and more competition. He didn’t say which parts of the company or which locations would be most affected.
“We need to look at every part of the company to save money and work better,” he said.
According to documents filed in New York, 285 jobs are being cut at a factory there.
As of December 2023, Tesla had 140,473 employees worldwide.
Tesla opened its Texas electric vehicle and battery factory in April 2022 with a big party. Now it’s making some of its Model Y cars and Cybertrucks there.
Musk later said in an interview that the Austin factory and another one in Germany were big money makers.
Documents from Texas show that last year Tesla planned to spend more than $770 million on expanding its facilities in Austin, including testing and making batteries, among other things.
The notices filed on Tuesday said that none of the workers being laid off are part of a union and they don’t have the right to replace less experienced workers.
In California, 2,266 jobs are being cut in Fremont, where Tesla’s first U.S. factory is, and 486 in Palo Alto, where its engineering office is. Jobs are being cut at other places too, like Burbank and Lathrop, where Tesla makes parts and batteries.
Executives will talk more about these changes in Tesla’s quarterly earnings call at 5:30 p.m. ET.
