WASHINGTON — NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory will lay off about 5% of its staff this week because of budget cuts, the second such major layoff at the center in less than a year.
In a memo to employees Nov. 12 that JPL later published online, center director Laurie Leshin announced that about 325 employees will be laid off this week to adjust to projected spending levels for fiscal year 2025. Affected employees will be notified Nov. 13 after a lab-wide virtual meeting.
“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,” she wrote.
This is the second round of staff layoffs at the lab, which is run by the California Institute of Technology for NASA. In February, JPL laid off 530 employees, or 8% of its workforce at the time, citing uncertainties about its fiscal year 2024 budget, in particular spending on the Mars Sample Return (MSR) program being led by the lab. At the time, House and Senate spending bills offered drastically different funding levels for MSR.
The February layoffs included 40 contractors as well as the 530 staff members. A month earlier, JPL laid off 100 contractors, again citing budget uncertainty.
In this latest layoff, Leshin did not specifically mention uncertainty about MSR funding as a reason for them. NASA is in the process of evaluating a dozen concepts from companies and organizations, including JPL, for alternative approaches to carrying out the mission at lower costs and faster timescales, and an outside panel expects to provide recommendations to agency leadership on a path forward in December.
Leshin said in the memo that JPL “had been working through multiple workforce scenarios to address the dynamic funding environment, and that we have been doing everything we can, in partnership with our colleagues at NASA and elsewhere, to minimize adverse effects on JPL’s capabilities and team.”
That led to these latest layoffs “to meet the available funding for FY’25.” She wrote that the layoffs will be spread across JPL, from technical to support staff, and that the size of the layoffs was lower than some earlier projections “thanks in part to the hard work of so many people across JPL.”
Leshin stated that she believed that these layoffs will be the last for the foreseeable future. “After this action, we will be at about 5,500 JPL regular employees. I believe this is a stable, supportable staffing level moving forward,” she wrote. “While we can never be 100% certain of the future budget, we will be well positioned for the work ahead.”
That lack of complete certainly is linked at least in part to the upcoming change in administrations. “Even though the coming leadership transition at NASA may introduce both new uncertainties and new opportunities,” she wrote, “this action would be happening regardless of the recent election outcome.”
