NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced on Monday, Oct. 13, it will be laying off 550 employees as part of its continued streamlining and restructuring plan, officials said.
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The layoffs are not related to the government shutdown, said JPL Director Dave Gallagher in a brief message on the website of the federal research and space agency located near Pasadena.
Gallagher wrote on the website that the agency is “undergoing a realignment of its workforce, including a reduction in staff.”
He also wrote that the cuts of 550 employees — about 11% of its total staff — slices across technical, business and support areas. This is the third round of layoffs at JPL in the past two years.
There are about 5,500 JPL employees, including on-site contractors, at the sprawling, 168-acre facility in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains straddling Pasadena and La Cañada Flintridge. In November, the agency laid off about 325 employees, citing federal funding concerns.
Employees who are being let go will be notified Tuesday, Oct. 14.
“Over the past few months, we have communicated openly with employees about the challenges and hard choices ahead,” wrote Gallagher. “This week’s action, while not easy, is essential to securing JPL’s future by creating a leaner infrastructure, focusing on our core technical capabilities, maintaining fiscal discipline, and positioning us to compete in the evolving space ecosystem — all while continuing to deliver on our vital work for NASA and the nation,”
JPL, which is part of NASA but managed by Caltech, a private university based in Pasadena, is known for successfully sending probes to the surface of Mars and to Saturn’s moons. The laboratory successfully designed, built and sent five rovers to the surface of Mars. It also puts up satellites that study gases in the Earth’s atmosphere and recently Caltech scientists found high levels of lead in the air immediately after the Eaton fire on Jan. 7.
While the layoffs were expected, reaction from Rep. Judy Chu, D-Pasadena, was swift.
Chu said she was “disappointed” and “disheartened” by the layoffs announced on Monday.
“These layoffs are an absolute tragedy, especially as they come at a time when our community is still recovering from the Eaton fire that destroyed thousands of homes and disrupted so many lives and livelihoods just 9 months ago. They also come on the heels of two devastating rounds of layoffs last year of over 850 JPL employees,” wrote Chu in a statement.
In February 2024, JPL announced layoffs of more than 500 people. Those cuts were prompted in part by a reduction in federal dollars that were anticipated in support of the Mars Sample Return program, a mission to retrieve soil and rock samples collected by a Mars rover and bring them to Earth for analysis.
Last week, when JPL said there would be more layoffs in the middle of the month, Bill Nye, nationally known as the “Science Guy,” and CEO of the Planetary Society headquartered in Pasadena, was in Washington D.C. protesting the proposed cuts that reportedly sought to take a nearly 25% chunk out NASA’s 2026 budget.
Science and scientific research – in particular NASA science – was at a “turning point,” Nye said at a press conference on Oct. 6 on the steps of Capitol Hill.
“This is not a luxury. It is a responsibility,” he said, a reference the U.S. Constitution’s “to promote the Progress of Science,” clause.
On Monday, Chu said as co-chair of the Planetary Science Caucus in Congress, she will lead a bipartisan appropriations effort to fully fund NASA’s science mission directorate.
“I will continue working tirelessly with my colleagues in Congress of both parties and will never stop fighting to protect our nation’s space program and the expert workforce that makes it all possible,” wrote Chu.
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