Tesla adds 24 new job postings for China days after Elon Musk threatens job cuts

US EV giant Tesla has added two dozen new job postings for China just a week after CEO Elon Musk said that the company was "overstaffed" in some departments and threatened to cut jobs. In an email seen by Reuters, Musk had said that he has a "super bad feeling" about the economy and needed to cut 10% of salaried staff at the electric car maker.

The company is now conducting its online hiring event starting from 7 pm Shanghai time and will start recruit staff for "smart manufacturing" roles. The new 24 job postings are an addition to already posted 224 current openings in China for managers and engineers.

The people hired in the manager and engineer posts will supervise the operation of Tesla's 6,000-ton die casting machines known as Giga Press, which is also one of the world's biggest. This is not the first time that Tesla is conducting a hiring drive on such a scale. The company regularly holds such hiring events online in China, with the latest one being held in May for summer interns.

Tesla's China plant is its export hub and a significant contributor to its global sales. The EV maker's revenue more than doubled in 2021 from a year ago, contributing to a quarter of the total income for the US automaker. The Shanghai plant manufactures Model 3 and Model Ys for domestic sale and export, and produces more than half of the cars it made last year. The company is also planning to expand the factory.

However, output at the Shanghai plant was affected by the two-month Covid-19 lockdown that lead Tesla to halt work for 22 days and later struggle to return to full production. Tesla had planned to ramp up production at the plant to 22,000 cars a week by mid-May but the plan failed due to the Covid restrictions.