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Jobs & Career
Tesla, SpaceX jobs to surge to 250,000 by 2031, letter highlights Musk’s employment impact
✍️ Times of India
🗓 01 Nov 2026, 08:50 AM
👁 3
An open letter by Larry Goldberg defending Elon Musk notes that Tesla and SpaceX currently employ about 158,500 people and project the workforce to rise to roughly 250,000 by 2031, generating around one million indirect jobs.
Larry Goldberg penned an open letter to Senator Bernie Sanders, defending Elon Musk and underscoring the job‑creating power of his companies. The correspondence, published in the Times of India, stresses that the criticism of Musk overlooks the massive employment footprint of his enterprises.
According to the letter, Tesla and SpaceX together employ roughly 158,500 workers directly across manufacturing, engineering, launch operations and corporate functions. This figure reflects the current scale of the two firms in the United States and abroad.
Goldberg projects that, driven by expansion plans such as new Gigafactories and increased launch cadence, the combined workforce could climb to about 250,000 employees by 2031. The growth is expected to cascade through suppliers, service providers and ancillary industries, creating an estimated one million indirect jobs.
The letter positions these employment prospects as a counter‑argument to policy proposals that could curb the companies’ operations, arguing that any restriction would jeopardise a significant source of future jobs for the Indian and global labour markets.
According to the letter, Tesla and SpaceX together employ roughly 158,500 workers directly across manufacturing, engineering, launch operations and corporate functions. This figure reflects the current scale of the two firms in the United States and abroad.
Goldberg projects that, driven by expansion plans such as new Gigafactories and increased launch cadence, the combined workforce could climb to about 250,000 employees by 2031. The growth is expected to cascade through suppliers, service providers and ancillary industries, creating an estimated one million indirect jobs.
The letter positions these employment prospects as a counter‑argument to policy proposals that could curb the companies’ operations, arguing that any restriction would jeopardise a significant source of future jobs for the Indian and global labour markets.