Tesla has grown to 45,000 employees despite laying off ~4,000 people earlier this year

Despite laying off about 9 percent of its staff earlier this year, Tesla has already grown to 45,000 employees, according to CEO Elon Musk.

It would mean that Tesla has now a higher headcount than before the layoffs.

When Tesla initiated the restructuring of the company in June, it reportedly had about 40,000 employees.

At the time, the company announced that it would be laying off about 9% of its workforce, which would reduce the headcount to the mid-30,000s.

Just a few months later, now Elon Musk has confirmed that Tesla has about 45,000 employees.

As we previously reported, the layoffs were more about a restructuring to manage the employee growth rate that they had over the past year and to flatten the management structure than anything else.

The company quickly went back into a ‘hiring spree’ following the layoffs.

But nonetheless, ~9,000 new workers in about 5 months is higher than what most people expected.

Gigafactory 1 is likely one of the biggest contributors to Tesla’s growing headcount.

According to the most recent data from the Governor’s Office of Economic Development, Tesla Gigafactory 1 employed just over 3,000 workers to start the year.

Now Musk says that it employs 7,000 people and they could grow that number to 20,000 people.

It’s unclear if Musk is counting temporary workers and contractors in the 45,000-headcount, which could explain the high number.

Tesla often hires contractors and temporary workers, especially at the Fremont factory to help with production. Though the company started a brutal review of contractors earlier this year and fired everyone that wasn’t vouched for by an employee.

Last quarter, Tesla also hired hundreds of temporary workers to help with scheduling test drives and deliveries.

Electrek’s Take

Regardless of how you look at it, Tesla’s employee growth rate is quite impressive.

As we stated during the latest round of layoffs, it wasn’t as scary as the media made it sound since Tesla was basically going back only a few months in terms of headcount.

They were basically managing their hiring efficiency which undoubtedly went down with the high growth rate.

Now they blew past their pre-layoff number really quick. Hopefully, they did it more efficiently this time and employees won’t have to go through another worrying round of layoffs.

What do you think? Let us know in the comment section below.