Elon Musk lost nearly 17 billion USD a day after the news that he wanted to lay off 10% of Tesla employees

Tesla shares fell 9.2% in trading on June 3, when an email about Elon Musk considering firing employees of this electric car company was leaked. According to the estimate of Forbes, in just one day, Musk’s fortune has “evaporated” $ 16.9 billion and is now $ 216.8 billion. Even so, the 50-year-old billionaire is still the richest person in the world.

Elon Musk is said to have sent an email to Tesla executives with the subject “global hiring stop”. In it, he said there was “a very bad feeling” about the economy and wanted to reduce the workforce by 10%.

This information was revealed not long after Musk asked Tesla employees to return to the office to work at least 40 hours a week or quit. “If you are not at the office, we will assume that you will resign,” Musk wrote in an email, adding that factory workers have even more stringent requirements.

The world’s richest billionaire also shared that he will personally approve special cases or exceptions. “I think this is just a symbolic dismissal. Musk knows that there will be an influx of employees who won’t return to the company. This way will be less expensive because there is no need to pay severance pay“, Jason Stomel – founder of technology human resource provider Cadre commented.

Billionaire Elon Musk. Photo: The Verge

According to Matt Maley, chief market strategist at Miller Tabak, “What investors want most is for Elon Musk to be quiet. Last week, when everything was quiet, Tesla stock had a nice rally“. The token is up 14% in the last week.

Since the beginning of the year, Tesla shares have dropped 33%, with the biggest drop starting after Musk announced the acquisition of Twitter in a deal worth $ 44 billion on April 14.

Tesla CEO is currently the person with the strongest warning in the auto industry about the possibility of a recession in the US economy and its impact on car manufacturers. In May, when asked by a Twitter user if the US was approaching a recession, the South African-born billionaire said:Yes. But this is actually a good thing. We’ve been giving money to idiots for too long. We need some bankruptcy“.

Musk’s views contradict that of some economists, including Goldman Sachs’ Jan Hatzius. Hatzius says recession fears”will be overblown unless new negative shocks occur.”

And according to Maley, “It’s great that people want to buy electric cars to save the environment, but most Tesla cars are expensive. If Musk is so worried about the economy that he has to lay off 10% of his workforce, it means he’s also concerned about demand for his electric vehicles. The economic downturn will affect Tesla“.

According to documents filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), by the end of 2021, Tesla has about 100,000 employees globally. Before the email about the 10% layoff, Tesla still posted 5,000 positions on LinkedIn, from sales staff in Tokyo to engineers in Berlin.

Tesla announced that it would stop hiring, lay off 10% of its employees, the US president wished Elon Musk “much luck” in his journey to the Moon