AUSTIN ( ABJ ) — Employment by Elon Musk-led Tesla Inc. in the Austin metro has yet to fully recover from the job cuts the company enacted last April at its electric vehicle factory in eastern Travis County, which constituted the region’s biggest round of layoffs in at least four decades.
Tesla finished last year with 21,191 employees in the metro, down about 7% — or 1,586 — from the 22,777 people it said it employed in the area at the end of 2023. The numbers are contained in annual incentives-related compliance reports that Tesla is required to file with Travis County.
In April 2024, Tesla eliminated 2,688 jobs at the gigafactory, or about 12% , as part of companywide job reductions, bringing its local employment to roughly 20,100. The layoffs came amid difficulty in the market for electric vehicles and declining sales for Tesla, with the company ending up reporting a 1.1% slump in sales for 2024, its first annual drop in a dozen years…