It started last week when Elon Musk made negative remarks about the economy and noted that Tesla was going to have to be making layoffs. Musk told executives the electric carmaker needed to cut staff by 10% because he has a "super bad feeling" about where the economy was headed. 

An email, titled "pause all hiring worldwide," was sent to executives on Thursday and was the latest sign of mounting macroeconomic headwinds as lower-than-expected US new car sales in May could be a harbinger of a recession. Tesla, which has EV factories worldwide, including ones in the US, Berlin, and China, employs about 100k staff, so reducing 10% of jobs could equate to 10k people.