Less than a week after announcing the company may cut up to 10% of its salaried staff, Tesla plans to hold a hiring event in China, and has posted some two dozen new job opening in China.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk previously said he thought the EV powerhouse was “overstaffed,” but will proceed with an online hiring event for “smart manufacturing” positions, according to an online post.
The company listed 224 openings in China for managers and engineers, according to a post on its WeChat account, 24 of which were newly posted on June 9, including managers and engineers to supervise operations at the company’s 6,000-ton die casting machines known as Giga Press, one of the world’s biggest.
Tesla regularly holds online hiring events in China, the last in May for summer interns.
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Tesla’s revenue from China more than doubled in 2021 over the year prior, accounting for around 25% of total revenue. The Shanghai plant, which manufactures Model 3 and Model Ys for domestic sale and export, produced more than half of the cars the company made in 2021.
However, output at the plant was badly hit by Shanghai’s two-month COVID-19 lockdown that halted work for 22 days and struggled to return to full production. Prior to this, Tesla had planned to ramp up production at the plant to 22,000 cars a week by mid-May.
CEO Musk said in an email that he had a “super bad feeling” about the economy and needed to cut 10% of salaried staff at the electric car maker.
In another email to employees, Musk said Tesla would reduce salaried headcount by 10%, as it has become “overstaffed in many areas,” but added that “hourly headcount will increase.”
Musk did not comment specifically on staffing in China.
- Reuters, with additional editing by Neal McGrath
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