Tesla had a rough year in 2018, losing $1.1 billion soon after CEO Elon Musk foretold profits for “all quarters going forward” this January. The company laid off 5,000 people, more than 9% of its workforce, over two rounds of “comprehensive organizational restructuring” in the months that followed.
Yet yesterday (Oct. 23), Tesla finally delivered a profitable quarter after Musk’s promise. It now seems to be pulling out of its hiring dry spell as well. This April, the number of open job postings on Tesla’s public jobs site had fallen steeply from more than 3,000 in 2018 to 871, according to the business-intelligence firm Thinknum Alternative Data.
That seems to have been the nadir. The number of job postings has steadily increased since then, and is now back up to 1,800 openings. That’s almost 40% growth during the third quarter, and more than halfway to where it was at the start of the year. The hiring suggests renewed confidence in the strength of Tesla’s sales and robust demand into 2020. On the company’s earnings call yesterday, Musk reiterated the plan to hit the company’s guidance of 360,000 vehicles sold this year.