Tesla Cancels Employee Recruitment Plan, After Elon Musk Is Pessimistic About World Economic Growth

Tesla car factory, began to reduce the number of employees. (photo: doc. pixabay)

JAKARTA - Tesla Inc has canceled three online employee recruitment events in China scheduled this month. It was the latest development after Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk threatened to lay off workers at the electric carmaker's factory, citing "overstaffing" in some areas.

However, Musk has not commented specifically on staff in China, who make more than half of Tesla's vehicles globally and account for a quarter of its revenue by 2021.

The company canceled three events for positions in its sales, R&D, and supply chain originally scheduled for June 16, 23, and 30. This notification appeared on the messaging app WeChat on the evening of Thursday, June 9, without specifying the reason.

Tesla did not respond to a request for comment from Reuters on Friday on the decision.

The notice of a June 9 event to recruit staff for "smart manufacturing" roles was nowhere to be seen and it wasn't immediately clear that it had been held as planned.

Factory operations in China still allow resume submissions for more than 1,000 vacancies posted on social media platforms, such as aerodynamics engineer, supply chain manager, store manager, plant supervisor and worker.

Musk has a "very bad feeling" about the world economy going forward. This is stated in an email that was seen by Reuters last week.

In another email to employees on Friday, Musk also said Tesla would reduce the number of salaried employees by a tenth, as it has become "overstaffed in many areas", but added that the hourly number of employees would increase.

Production at Tesla's Shanghai plant was hit hard after China's commercial hub began a two-month COVID-19 lockdown in late March.

Output will fall by more than a third this quarter from the previous one. The amount of this drop exceeds Musk's predictions