A Second Round of Layoffs at JPL
JPL Director Laurie Leshin announced another workforce reduction today, the second this year. Cuts to NASA’s overall science budget due to the Fiscal Responsibility Act coupled with uncertainty about the future of the Mars Sample Return mission are deeply affecting the laboratory, but Leshin said she believes they will be at a “more stable” level now.
Today’s reduction of 5 percent of JPL’s workforce is in addition to the 8 percent laid off in February. That’s 905 JPL employees — 580 in February and 325 now — who have lost their jobs in addition to contractors.

Leshin said the number today actually is lower than anticipated.
“Despite this being incredibly difficult for our community, this number is lower than projected a few months ago thanks in part to the hard work of so many people across JPL. The workforce assessment conducted as part of this process has been both extensive and thorough, and although we can never have perfect insight into the future, I sincerely believe that after this action we will be at a more stable workforce level moving forward.”
The move is in response to the expected level of funding in FY2025. Congress hasn’t completed action on any of the FY2025 appropriations bills including the Commerce-Justice-Science bill that funds NASA, but the prognosis isn’t promising. NASA’s FY2024 budget was cut two percent below what it received in FY2023. The request for FY2025 would only take it back to the FY2023 level. The House and Senate Appropriations Committees approved figures that are close to the request. FY2025 began on October 1 and the government is operating under a Continuing Resolution (CR). CRs hold agencies to their prior year funding levels. The CR expires on December 20. Whether Congress completes action on the regular appropriations bills by then is highly uncertain.
After this second reduction, the lab will have about 5,500 employees, “a stable, supportable staffing level” for the future. Leshin noted that the layoffs are independent of the upcoming leadership transition at NASA as Donald Trump resumes the presidency.
“While we can never be 100% certain of the future budget, we will be well positioned for the work ahead. This may not help much in this difficult moment, but I do want to be crystal clear with my thoughts and perspective. If we hold strong together, we will come through this, just as we have done during other turbulent times in JPL’s nearly 90-year history. Finally, even though the coming leadership transition at NASA may introduce both new uncertainties and new opportunities, this action would be happening regardless of the recent election outcome.”
Unlike NASA’s nine civil service field centers, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory is a Federally Funded Research and Development Center (FFRDC) operated for NASA by the California Institute of Technology. NASA has said in the past it doesn’t tell JPL how many staff it should have, only what funding the lab can expect from NASA.

The layoffs in February were due largely to cutbacks in the Mars Sample Return mission as the agency decides how to proceed with a lower cost architecture. Members of the congressional California delegation wrote a letter to the Office of Management and Budget complaining about those workforce reductions saying they would “result in decades worth of lost science, undermining the years of hard work and investments already put into NASA’s Mars Exploration Program and threatening the many years of future scientific discovery and innovation to come.” One of them was Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) who represents California’s 30th district close to JPL. He was just elected to the Senate last week.
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