Tesla cancels three June online hires events for China

June 13, 2022: -Tesla has cancelled three online recruitment events for China this month, the latest development after Chief Executive Elon Musk threatened job cuts at the electric car maker, which says it was “overstaffed” in some areas.

However, Musk had not explicitly commented on staffing in China, which made more than half of the vehicles for the automaker globally and contributed a quarter of its revenue in 2021.

The company cancelled the three events for positions in sales, R&D, and its supply chain initially scheduled for June 16, 23, and 30, notifications on messaging app WeChat showed late on Thursday without stating a reason.

Notifying a June 9 event to recruit staff for “smart manufacturing” roles was not visible, and it was not instantly clear it had been held as planned.

The China operation still permits summary submission for more than 1,000 openings on social media platforms, such as aerodynamics engineers, supply chain managers, store managers, factory supervisors, and workers.

Musk had a “super bad feeling” around the economy, he said in an email to Reuters in the previous week.

On Friday, in another email to employees, Musk said Tesla would reduce salaried headcount by a tenth, as it had become “overstaffed in many areas,” but added that hourly headcount would increase.

Production at Tesla’s Shanghai plant was hardly reached after the Chinese commercial hub started a two-month Covid-19 lockdown in March.

Output is set to drop by more than a third this quarter from the previous one, outpacing Musk’s prediction.