Tesla chief executive Elon Musk has a “super bad feeling” about the economy and wants to cut about 10 per cent of jobs at the electric car maker. The message came two days after the world’s richest man told employees to return to the workplace or leave the company.
Tesla employed about 100,000 people at the end of 2021, according to its annual filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
No one from the company was immediately available for comment.
In an email sent to executives on Thursday, titled “pause all hiring worldwide”, Mr Musk said he had a “super bad feeling” about the economy.
Tesla has raised the prices of its vehicles this year due to significant inflationary pressure on raw materials and logistics during the crisis in Ukraine.
It also stopped taking orders on its website for its eagerly awaited Cybertruck model outside the US, Canada and Mexico.
On Tuesday, Mr Musk told staff to return to the workplace or leave the company, a demand that has already faced pushback in Germany where the company has a new factory.
“Everyone at Tesla is required to spend a minimum of 40 hours in the office per week,” Mr Musk wrote in that email.
“If you don’t show up, we will assume you have resigned.”
On Thursday, Mr Musk also engaged in a Twitter spat with Australia technology billionaire and Atlassian co-founder Scott Farquhar, who ridiculed the directive in a series of tweets as being “like something out of the 1950s”.
Mr Musk tweeted: “Recessions serve a vital economic cleansing function” in response to a tweet by Mr Farquhar, who encouraged Tesla employees to look into its remote work positions.
In late May, when asked by a Twitter user whether the economy was approaching a recession, Mr Musk said, “Yes, but this is actually a good thing. It has been raining money on fools for too long. Some bankruptcies need to happen.”
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