Tesla employees have cause for concern. An email from the company’s founder and top executive Elon Musk, accessed by Reuters, reflects his opinion that there are too many people at the company, namely 10% of the automaker’s 99,290 employees is nearly 10,000 workers . Musk bases these calculations on a hunch. He has “a super bad feeling about the economic situation,” he says. The email to Tesla executives is titled “hiring hiatus,” a sign that those who take their resumes to the most valuable automaker on the stock market — more than $800,000 million — won’t have it easy either get job .hollow.
Musk’s economic forecast comes at a time of great uncertainty for the United States: The labor market is in a period of full employment, and in some sectors it is even difficult to find workers. But rate hikes by the Federal Reserve threaten to weaken growth, and high inflation — 8.3% in April — driven by high energy prices from the war in Ukraine, and pay rises to attract talent companies need to undertake are creating a price escalation that is wearing down the Biden administration, which has prompted the president to try to associate them with Russia and has repeatedly referred to them as “Putin’s inflation.”
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In this tumultuous scenario, Musk doesn’t see it at all clearly. Though his company remains the largest cap in the entire sector, Tesla shares are down 30% in six months. This deterioration is due in large part to the corporate adventure the tycoon has embarked on in an attempt to buy the social network Twitter. The market anticipates that it will have to sell some of its stock to raise enough capital to cover its share of the huge bill the deal requires — $44,000 million — which is not at all clear if it will materialize becomes.
In another email released this week, Musk warned his employees against spending at least 40 hours a week in the office. Only when these hours are completed does the employer allow employees to work remotely. “Everyone at Tesla has to be in the office at least 40 hours a week. If you don’t show up, we’ll assume you’ve resigned,” he wrote.
Although in certain cases investors have welcomed downsizing because it means a reduction in costs for the company and thus an opportunity to maximize profits, this has not happened at Tesla. Its shareholders didn’t welcome the leak of Musk’s possible plans because they portend the arrival of economic turmoil, to which the maker would be vulnerable. As a result, Tesla shares plunged more than 8% during the Wall Street trading session in a day of widespread declines.
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