NASA is undergoing another round of layoffs. And once again, it’s the space agency’s famous Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California that’s taking the hit.
On Tuesday, JPL announced that it will be saying goodbye to 325 employees, or about five percent of its workforce, marking the second time this year that the research lab has downsized its personnel.
“This is a message I had hoped not to have to write,” JPL director Laurie Leshin wrote in a memo to employees. “With lower budgets and based on the forecasted work ahead, we had to tighten our belts across the board, and you will see that reflected in the layoff impacts.”
Cost Cutting
JPL previously laid off 530 employees in February, which accounted for eight percent of its staff at the time, in response to agency wide budget cuts.
One issue is that the funds that the lab would receive for its role in the ambitious, multi-billion dollar Mars Sample Return mission were sharply reduced from over $900 million to around just $300 million this year. The mission’s future remains uncertain, pending a further review that could decide its fate.
These latest cuts don’t necessarily pertain to the Mars mission specifically, according to the memo, and were taken to fall within available funds for the 2025 federal fiscal year, which commenced in October.
“This reduction is spread across essentially all areas of the Lab including our technical, project, business, and support areas,” Leshin wrote. “We have taken seriously the need to re-size our workforce, whether direct-funded (project) or funded on overhead (burden).”
Nonetheless, the workforce reduction is actually lower than what was projected a few months ago, Leshin said.
Budget Won’t Budge
NASA has struggled with its budget in recent years. The space agency fought for an increased budget for 2024, but was handed a two percent decrease, falling over $2 billion short of what it was seeking.
Along with mass layoffs, this has forced NASA to abandon sending its VIPER rover to the Moon, despite already spending $450 million on the project.
It’s all the more striking because the agency recently announced that it generated over $75.6 billion in US economic output last year, or about three times its budget. Even setting its scientific value aside, there’s a strong argument to be made that, in the face of the sheer economic power it’s generating, NASA isn’t getting the money it deserves.
How president-elect Donald Trump’s administration could affect NASA’s financial future is also a question worth asking. But Leshin says the layoffs were happening regardless of who’s president, and are unrelated to the outcome of the election.
