By Mary O’KEEFE

On Tuesday, 550 employees at Jet Propulsion Laboratory were laid off. 

“In order to best position JPL going forward, we are taking steps to restructure and establish an appropriate size to ensure future success,” according to a message from JPL director Dave Gallagher. The message was released on the JPL NASA website on Monday. 

Gallagher stated the information of pending layoffs as “challenges and hard choices ahead” had been shared with employees over the past few months. 

This layoff is about 11% of the workforce and follows a 2024 layoff that affected about 530 employees and about 40 contractors. 

“This is difficult news for our community. JPL is part of the fabric of Pasadena and the loss of so many skilled jobs will be felt deeply. My office will be in touch with local leaders to understand how we can best support the families and small businesses affected by these layoffs,” stated Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger. 

“I am extremely disappointed and disheartened by the hundreds of JPL layoffs announced today, and my thoughts are with all the impacted workers and their families. 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 nine months ago,” stated Rep Judy Chu. 

JPL was hit hard by the Eaton Fire with numerous employees losing their homes. JPLers rallied over the weeks and months that followed the fires to help those who needed support. 

“This is not only a tragedy for our community but also an immense loss for our nation. JPL is a national asset that has helped the United States accomplish some of the greatest feats in space and science for decades. Every layoff devastates the highly skilled and uniquely talented workforce that has made these accomplishments possible. Taken together with last year’s layoffs, this will result in an untold loss of scientific knowledge and expertise that threatens the very future of American leadership in space exploration and scientific discovery,” Chu added. “As a steadfast champion of JPL and Caltech, I have been doing everything I can to protect the workforce and fight for full funding for NASA’s programs and missions. I have repeatedly led efforts in Congress pushing for funding for critical missions like Mars Sample Return led by JPL. And as co-chair of the Planetary Science Caucus in Congress, I have led bipartisan appropriations requests to demand that Congress fully fund NASA’s Science Mission Directorate and protect all its missions. Most recently, I have been urging Appropriators to include language in any short-term federal funding bill that would explicitly protect NASA’s budget and missions from any cuts. 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.”

JPLers are not just employees on Lab, they are also mentors to numerous students across the state and beyond. In the local area, Crescenta Valley, Clark Magnet and La Cañada high schools have all benefited from JPL support with their robot teams. JPL members are often found giving educational talks at local elementary schools as well. The JPL outreach included tours of the Lab and in the past the monthly von Kármán Speaker Series. 

In a previous response from Governor Gavin Newsom to CVW concerning the legacy of JPL in California he stated, “We are in regular contact with JPL and will continue to work with them, including on our recently expanded collaboration to monitor air and water in the aftermath of the Los Angeles wildfires. We truly value the role that JPL plays in leveraging science and technology to address real-world challenges and trust that they will continue to be great partners with the State of California, which is home to more engineers, more scientists, more researchers and more Nobel laureates than anywhere else in the nation – none of which we expect to change anytime soon.”

This statement was made prior to the most recent layoff of about 11% of the Lab’s workforce.