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Tesla was exposed that a large number of layoffs led to a sharp fall in stock prices, Musk had to come out to "put out the fire." "I have a very bad feeling about the US economy," Musk said in an internal email titled "suspension of global recruitment" obtained by Reuters two days ago. " In the email, Tesla CEO Musk said Tesla needed to "cut about 10 per cent of staff" and "suspend global recruitment". In response, Tesla, a relevant person in China, said that there was no reply to the suspension of recruitment for the time being.

Affected by the news, Tesla's shares fell 9.22% on Friday to close at $703.55, with a total market capitalization of $728.885 billion, making it the world's largest car company by market capitalization. However, since Musk decided to buy Twitter, its market value has plummeted after hitting a short-term high. Tesla's share price has fallen 35.13% since April 4, from US $1089.38 to US $703.55, with a total market capitalization of US $394.757 billion lost. At the latest exchange rate of the US dollar to the RMB, it is about 2.63 trillion yuan.

On June 5, an unverified Twitter account posted that Tesla's employee number would increase in the next 12 months. In response, Musk, CEO of Tesla, replied: "Tesla's total number of employees will grow in the next 12 months, but the number of salaried employees should be relatively stable."

According to public data, the number of Tesla employees from 2019 to 2021 is 48016, 70757 and 99290 respectively, of which Tesla recruited 28533 employees worldwide in 2021, an increase of 40.3% over the same period last year, mainly from the Chinese market and the European market. According to Tesla's annual financial report, Tesla had 99290 employees worldwide by the end of 2021, with "layoffs of 10 per cent", which means nearly 10, 000 people will leave Tesla. However, Tesla did not disclose the specific number of employees in their front-line production, product development, delivery and after-sales areas in the relevant documents, so it is not clear how many employees will be affected by Tesla's layoffs of salaried employees.

As a world-renowned electric car manufacturer, whether Tesla's layoffs will affect the production of relevant factories and the delivery of electric vehicles has also attracted much attention, especially when the Berlin super-factory and the Texas super-factory have been put into production one after another. steadily increasing production capacity requires more employees. However, judging from internal emails, Tesla's layoffs will not affect the production of electric vehicles. Musk said in an email that the layoffs do not apply to any employees who actually produce cars, battery packs or install solar products.

Contrary to the layoffs, Tesla still needs a large number of employees to produce and deliver electric vehicles, while cutting 10 per cent of salaried employees and increasing the number of hourly workers may increase Tesla's overall workforce. That is why Musk says Tesla's workforce will increase in the next 12 months. However, in Musk's brief response to his latest Twitter, it was not clear whether Tesla would turn some of his existing salaried employees into hourly workers, or whether Tesla would hire new employees.

Tesla's last layoff dates back to early 2019, when Tesla laid off 7% of its staff and retained only the most critical temporary workers and contractors. At the time, Musk said in an internal email that before the layoff decision, Tesla was already taking various cost-cutting measures to improve profit margins and expand profitability. To this end, Tesla announced at that time that it would change to pure online sales, leaving only a small number of physical stores as exhibitions, showrooms and Tesla information centers to continue to operate.

Today, three years later, Tesla has a good momentum of development. According to the annual report, Tesla's total revenue in fiscal year 2021 was $53.823 billion (340.193 billion yuan), up 71 percent from a year earlier, and net profit was $5.519 billion (34.88 billion yuan), up 665 percent from a year earlier. It is understood that this is Tesla's second year of profitability, and it is also the most profitable year since Tesla was founded.

Nevertheless, Musk is pessimistic about the US economy, mainly because the US economy is facing serious inflationary pressures, and the Federal Reserve is using interest rate hikes to curb inflation in order to reduce demand-side growth. At the same time, under the influence of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, the supply of spare parts is not in place, the cost of raw materials is rising rapidly, and then the cost of production and operation is affected. Tesla has raised the price of his products many times in the past year, although the supply exceeds the demand. But the pick-up cycle has been greatly extended. According to Tesla's US official website, the current delivery time for Model 3 is expected to be March-June, while that for Model Y is expected to be June-September.

Mr Musk believes that the US will fall into a 12-to 18-month recession and that the market economy will not return to normal until most of the companies with negative cash flows are cleared. In addition, Musk said that Tesla employees work from home behavior is unacceptable, he said in an email to Tesla executives, working from home is not acceptable, employees want to work from home, at least 40 hours a week in the office, if not show up, assume that you have resigned. Musk also mentioned in the email, "the higher the position, the more important your existence is." That's why I often live in factories-people on the production line can see me working with them. If I had not done so, Tesla would have gone bankrupt. "

In a conference call reported in the first quarter, Musk said Tesla's delivery volume in the second quarter of this year would be close to or slightly lower than that in the first quarter, but would see significant growth in the second half of this year.

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