JPL to lay off 8% of its work force plus 40 contractors
Claiming the uncertainty of its federal budget allocation due to Congress’s inability to pass a new budget, the Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) earlier today announced it was laying off 8% of its work force, 530 employees, plus 40 contractors.
In a memo to JPL staff Feb. 6, [director Laurie] Leshin said that a lack of a final 2024 appropriations bill — NASA is operating on a CR [continuing resolution] that runs until March 8 — forced the layoffs after taking other measures such as a hiring freeze and reductions in MSR [Mars Sample Return] contracts and other spending, as well as the earlier contractor layoffs. “So in the absence of an appropriation, and as much as we wish we didn’t need to take this action, we must now move forward to protect against even deeper cuts later were we to wait,” she wrote.
Uncertainty about how the Mars Sample Return project should be designed and built had caused Congress to express doubts about the project, with the Senate suggesting major cuts. NASA responded by loudly pausing the project and suggesting its own cuts. JPL has now followed up with these layoffs. Both have I think done so as a lobbying tactic, and as expected in this game of budget lobbying these actions have caused many legislators to scream in horror: “We really didn’t mean it! We really don’t want to cut anything!”
Expect our bankrupt Congress to fold and provide NASA and JPL the blank check it wants to fly a Mars mission that will cost billions, be years late, and likely be beaten to Mars by SpaceX’s Starship (which could do the job for a tenth the cost).
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Claiming the uncertainty of its federal budget allocation due to Congress’s inability to pass a new budget, the Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) earlier today announced it was laying off 8% of its work force, 530 employees, plus 40 contractors.
In a memo to JPL staff Feb. 6, [director Laurie] Leshin said that a lack of a final 2024 appropriations bill — NASA is operating on a CR [continuing resolution] that runs until March 8 — forced the layoffs after taking other measures such as a hiring freeze and reductions in MSR [Mars Sample Return] contracts and other spending, as well as the earlier contractor layoffs. “So in the absence of an appropriation, and as much as we wish we didn’t need to take this action, we must now move forward to protect against even deeper cuts later were we to wait,” she wrote.
Uncertainty about how the Mars Sample Return project should be designed and built had caused Congress to express doubts about the project, with the Senate suggesting major cuts. NASA responded by loudly pausing the project and suggesting its own cuts. JPL has now followed up with these layoffs. Both have I think done so as a lobbying tactic, and as expected in this game of budget lobbying these actions have caused many legislators to scream in horror: “We really didn’t mean it! We really don’t want to cut anything!”
Expect our bankrupt Congress to fold and provide NASA and JPL the blank check it wants to fly a Mars mission that will cost billions, be years late, and likely be beaten to Mars by SpaceX’s Starship (which could do the job for a tenth the cost).
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Wow! 530 workers are only 8% of the total workforce? What do all these people do all day? JPL must be another super-bloated government agency, whose main skill seems to be adding bodies to it‘s workforce while getting next to nothing done! Where is the inspector general? Time for a major house-cleaning at JPL!
JPL and NASA, where budgets and spending rise faster than their rockets.
Color me surprised that any federal agency can lay off people. I though federal jobs were untouchable? Contractors are at the mercy of the contract, of course.
David M. Cook asked: “530 workers are only 8% of the total workforce? What do all these people do all day?”
These are the people that do all of NASA’s (therefore all of America’s) planetary science. They do several other deep space probes, but Goddard operates a few, too. JPL operates NASA’s Deep Space Network. JPL has several ongoing missions and some future missions, the design, development, and manufacture of which require a lot of people. This is why so many are likely to be laid off from Mars Sample Return, which is still in development.
JPL also does research and development in general and is an important part of NASA and the U.S. space program.
Six thousand people is fairly reasonable for what they do, although I do wish that the Mars Sample Return concept had been better conceived before they began the Perseverance project, which is the rover that is collecting the samples to be returned.
The 2011 Planetary Science Decadal Survey gave a top priority to returning samples from Mars, and someone at NASA hastily assigned the first part to Perseverance, and decided that sometime in the future JPL would figure out a way to return them here to Earth. That future is here, and there still isn’t a good plan for returning them. This is what happens when a bureaucrat comes up with half a plan and expects someone else to figure out how to clean up the mess for free.
Edward wrote, “These are the people that do all of NASA’s (therefore all of America’s) planetary science.”
I think the people at APL in Maryland would take a great exception to this statement.
JPL is cast as the villain in Alan Stearn’s book about the New Horizon’s mission to Pluto. It is portrayed as a monopolist. He alleged that it used underhanded means to protect itself from the upstart APL. Perhaps there is some fat to cut.
For years–a lot of folks wanted a NASA BRAC
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/341/1
Marshall—being in a Red State was always a target for folks who were anti-expansion.
But look who is bawling now—my least favorite human being, next to Garver and Proxmire that is:
https://nasawatch.com/personnel-news/pathetic-lack-of-response-from-human-commercial-space-over-layoffs/
A better voice:
https://nasawatch.com/personnel-news/a-former-jplers-take-on-the-layoffs/
Now that is a better defense in terms of folks who build rockets.
Europa Clipper only exists because of SLS defender Culberson—but what did the planetary scientists do but stab Marshall in the back.
You want to know why it is that no one is running your defense JPL?
Your attempts to have everyone else face cuts so you could fly an endless number of bomb disposal robots atop some Delta II sounding rockets.
You got exactly what you deserve Pasadena.