NASA JPL Lays Off 100 Contractors Due To Uncertain 2024 Fiscal Budget

NASA's JPL lays off 100 employees (photo: dock. JPL)

JAKARTA - Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), facilities belonging to the United States Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA) have laid off a hundred workers due to potential budget cuts.

From the Spacenews report, a hundred workers who were cut were contractors for the Mars Sample Return (MSR) program. The layoff (PHK) was carried out last week, but was only confirmed on Sunday, January 7.

A spokesman for JPL said that the company was forced to lay off due to the federal budget for the fiscal year 2024 which was still uncertain. Most likely, JPL will take other actions such as a thorough cut in spending.

Meanwhile, JPL Director Laurie Leshin said that they received direct directions from NASA. They are required to systematically plan actions at the lowest level to deal with the budget problem.

"So, the first thing to do is see where we use the contractor at the location on the MSR, and also elsewhere, where JPL can re-store for that," Leshin explained on Monday, January 8.

Actually, contractors are additional capacity that will be used by companies when needed. These contractors are part of the MSR, but the majority of them are working on projects that are considered over by JPL.

JPL also decided to lay off contractors. For now, one of the main facilities from NASA will wait for the 2024 fiscal allocation process. If the results remain poor as expected, JPL will probably do more layoffs.

"If the situation of budget reduction continues, we must also consider difficult decisions regarding potential layoffs," said JPL. This layoff is not only targeting contractors, but also ordinary employees who work in JPL laboratories.