Elon Musk said in an interview at the Qatar Economic Forum that the U.S. recession is imminent and "inevitable at some point." Musk adds that discussions around it are more likely about when it is likely going to happen.
Musk, Dimon, and Scharf: Magnates, Not Too Optimistic About U.S. Economy
A lot of other financial and tech experts share the same belief. According to JPMorgan Chase's Jamie Dimon, their uncertainty about the future of the U.S. economy is increasingly being felt as inflation statistics grow higher by the day. Dimon adds that what he sees right now is an economic hurricane incoming.
Charles Scharf, chief executive officer of Wells Fargo, said that there is no question anymore how the U.S. economy is going to tumble in the next few years.
"I think it's going to be hard to avoid, you know, some kind of recession, just given the magnitude of the slowing that has to take place," said Scharf.
The Federal Reserve is hard at work in determining the ways to address growing inflation, such as raising interest rates. The problem, however, is that they believe a stronger inflation wave on the market is coming soon, and it might be bigger than what we have been experiencing recently.
The tech mogul owning SpaceX and Tesla said his thoughts on the outlook of the U.S. economy as he bared his plans in the short-term, primarily his targets on the retrenchment of salaried staff. A report from Reuters revealed that Musk's plan for Tesla is to cut costs on salaried staff by shedding 10% of its workforce "over the next probably three months or so."
According to Musk, Tesla's manpower grew way too expensive too fast. "We grew very fast on the salaried side," said Tesla. As of recent reports, Tesla has around 100,000 people in its employ. The plan, according to Musk, is to reduce about 3.5% of that number as they also bolster staff recruitment efforts for those who will be assigned on an hourly basis.
Musk Flirts With Self-Limitations on Social Media
However, this was not the first time when Musk decided to solve his companies' issues with terminations of employment. A few days ago, Musk fired multiple SpaceX employees because of their involvement in an open letter that heavily criticized him and his demeanor. According to them, Musk's actions became a "frequent source of distraction and embarrassment" for the employees.
As many of you may already know, Musk is an avid user of the social media micro-blogging platform Twitter. Besides promoting meme cryptocurrencies such as the Dogecoin, Musk also made several statements mocking other tech magnates like Microsoft's Bill Gates and Twitter's Parag Agrawal.
"It is critical to make clear to our teams and to our potential talent pool that his messaging does not reflect our work, our mission, or our values," the open letter says.
There are no publicized numbers yet regarding how many SpaceX workers were laid off. Gwynne Shotwell, president at SpaceX, noted that it was uncalled for because workers are not necessarily engaged in "overreaching activism" given that they still have a lot of important work to do.
