Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) boss Elon Musk clarified that he plans to slash the numbers of salaried workers by 10% over the coming three months, but expects to grow the number of hourly workers at the same time.
“We grew very fast on the salaried side, grew a little too fast in some areas,” Musk told the Qatar Economic Forum.
This followed a memo sent to employees earlier this month where he warned of job cuts as he had a “super bad feeling” about the economy, and instructed executives to “pause all hiring worldwide”.
The new figure of a 10% reduction in salaried workers came after the South Africa-born billionaire tweeted just over a week ago that numbers of salaried workers “should be fairly flat”.
But after telling the Qatar online forum that Tesla was “about two-thirds hourly and one-third salaried”, he calculated that overall the reduction in the size of the workforce would be much less than 10%.
“Technically the layoff is only 3% of the total workforce,” he said, later saying it could be 3.5%.
“A year from now, I think our headcount will be higher both in salaried and hourly” workers, he added.