FOURTH ROUND OF LAYOFFS EXPERIENCED AT NASA JPL CLOSING 550 POSITIONS
About 550 workers have been placed on vacation at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) as part of the agency's fourth round of layoffs since January 2024. The present government shutdown, which has already resulted in large budget cuts inside federal agencies, coincides with this staff reduction. On October 13, JPL Director Dave Gallagher announced the workforce restructuring, estimating that around 11% of the technical, business, and support staff at the laboratory will be affected. On October 14, Gallagher continued, staff members would receive an update on their situation.
Although difficult, this week's action is crucial to safeguarding JPL's future by establishing a more streamlined infrastructure, concentrating on our core technological competencies, upholding fiscal restraint, and putting us in a competitive position within the changing space environment, Gallagher says. Even while over 750,000 employees are still on furlough, NASA has also claimed that its most recent round of layoffs had nothing to do with the government shutdown. Instead, the present administration's persistent attacks on NASA's financing are the reason behind the agency's "leaner infrastructure." For instance, President Trump's budget proposal for 2026 calls for a 24% budget decrease, which Bill Nye has referred to as "extinction-level."
Both planned and ongoing missions would be severely curtailed by the decreased funding, which would also result in employee layoffs. Over 1,500 employees and contractors have previously been let go by JPL in these four rounds.
Gallagher wrote in an email to staff that Space.com shared, "I understand this is a great lot of change in a short period of time and will be tough for our entire community in the coming weeks." "Although difficult, I think that by taking these steps now, the Lab will be able to change at the rate and scale required to support humanity's most ambitious space goals."
JPL, a California-based organisation run by Caltech, is mostly focused on robotic space exploration, deploying satellites, rovers, and probes around the solar system. Among its major missions are the Deep Space Network, the Euclid Space Telescope, the Europe Clipper, the Psyche asteroid probe, the Perseverance Mars rover, and others. As NASA's sole federally financed R&D facility, JPL is in a vulnerable position given the ongoing danger of budget cuts.
A temporary restraining order prohibiting the Trump administration from terminating federal employees amid the government shutdown was issued by a federal judge on October 15. The Trump administration has "taken advantage of the break in government expenditures and government operating to believe that all bets are off [and that] the laws don't apply to them anymore," according to U.S. District Judge Susan Yvonne Illston's statement.