is having a tough year marked by industry headwinds, slowing sales, and large layoffs. The electric-vehicle maker is still a very popular employer, though.
In the company’s recently published annual Impact Report, Tesla reported it received 5.9 million job applications in 2023. That’s up from 3.6 million in 2022, and 3 million in 2021.
‘We participated in over 200 recruiting events with universities, the military, and other organizations,” reads part of the report. “This helped us cast a wide recruiting net, enabling groups who have not traditionally been included in our hiring pipeline.”
Tesla ended 2023 with about 140,000 employees, up from 128,000 at the end of 2022. Its current workforce is probably now back under 130,000 again after the company announced large layoffs in April.
“We’ve had a long period of prosperity from 2019 to now,” said CEO Elon Musk on his company’s first-quarter earnings conference call. If the company “is 5% wrong per year, that accumulates to 25%, 30% of inefficiency. We’ve made some corrections along the way, but it is time to reorganize the company for the next phase of growth.”
Currently, Tesla describes itself as between two growth waves. The first was the introduction of the Model 3 and Y vehicles which helped sales expand to more than 1.8 million cars in 2023 from less than 100,000 in 2016. Tesla’s next wave of growth will be driven by lower-priced EVs and self-driving technology, according to the company.
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Tesla delivered about 387,000 vehicles in the first quarter of 2024, down almost 9% year over year. For the second quarter, Wall Street projects sales of 452,000 vehicles, down from 466,000 delivered a year ago. Analysts don’t project year-over-year growth until the third quarter.
Slowing growth has weighed on investor sentiment. Coming into Monday trading, shares were down about 28% year to date.
Shares were up 0.1% in premarket trading Monday at $178.30, while
and
futures were up 0.2% and 0.5%, respectively.
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Write to Al Root at allen.root@dowjones.com
