MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced Feb. 6 it will lay off 530 employees, about 8% of its staff, citing uncertainty about its budget for 2024.
In a statement, JPL said it would lay off about 530 employees, as well as 40 contractors, after exhausting other efforts to reduce costs given potential spending reductions for NASA and specifically for Mars Sample Return (MSR), a major program for the Pasadena, California-based center.
“After exhausting all other measures to adjust to a lower budget from NASA, and in the absence of a [fiscal year 2024] appropriation from Congress, we have had to make the difficult decision to reduce the JPL workforce through layoffs,” JPL stated.
The layoffs come a month after JPL laid off 100 contractors, many of whom had been working on MSR. Those layoffs were in response to a NASA decision in November to reduce spending on MSR while the agency operates on a continuing resolution (CR) that funds programs at 2023 levels. Agency officials said in November that sharp differences in funding for MSR between House and Senate spending bills for 2024 — $949.3 million in the House versus $300 million in the Senate — forced them to reduce spending should Congress enact the lower spending level.
Laurie Leshin, director of JPL, said in a Jan. 8 interview that she had warned employees that staff layoffs were a possibility. “I wanted to be transparent with the laboratory and we have been all along, saying there’s a lot of uncertainty,” she said. “We’ve come out now and said, you know, layoffs are looking more likely and there certainly will be some at some of these lower levels of funding.”
In a memo to JPL staff Feb. 6, Leshin said that a lack of a final 2024 appropriations bill — NASA is operating on a CR that runs until March 8 — forced the layoffs after taking other measures such as a hiring freeze and reductions in MSR contracts and other spending, as well as the…
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