Employees of the California Laboratory Jet Propulsion Laboratory are preparing for layoffs while the United States government is heading to its second week of a closure linked to a standby budget agreement.
The Center for Research and Legendary Development of La Cañada-Flintridge is known for its work on the exploration of robotic space, including Rovers Mars and deep space probes, as well as its cutting-edge satellite networks that monitor the earth. It is funded by NASA and managed by the California Institute of Technology.
Agency officials have confirmed that dismissals are imminent this month, but have refused to provide an exact number of affected employees. JPL currently employs around 5,500 people after having undergone two laps dismissals Affecting 855 people last year.
The NASAWatch.com agency’s monitoring website has indicated that layoffs would be as high as 4,000, but sources have rejected this with representative Judy Chu (D-Monterey Park) Say to Los Angeles Daily News The number is “largely incorrect”.
In a statement provided in Nasawatch.com and shared with the Times, agency officials said that JPL was “not the source of communication suggesting that 4,000 of the 5,500 JPL employees could have on October 15, 2025.”
“The laboratory was very transparent in the regular updates of employees that certain layoffs are expected in October, but the number of your position is largely incorrect and lack of allocation,” the statement said.
Many will depend on how the budgetary stage of the congress will take place. The American government is currently closed because the Chamber and the Senate have not concluded an agreement on how to finance federal operations.
No JPL employees were known because of the closure, as they are Caltech employees and not employees of the federal government.
But JPL lives and dies through the budget. In May, the Trump administration proposed a massive reduction of $ 6 billion in the budget of 24.8 billion dollars in NASA, or around 24%. The highly targeted cuts of planetary, astrophysics and terrestrial observation missions which would affect the work of JPL.
The current proposals of the credit committees of the Chamber and the Senate would both reduce less than that, but would always represent different visions for the agency this year.
The Room credits bill largely rejects Trump’s original proposal and maintains the high -end Budget of NASA at 24.8 billion dollars. But the bill moves certain resources within the agency, including larger benefits for human spatial exploration and selective cuts of more than a billion dollars from the Directorate of the Scientific Mission of NASA, which oversees research on space and earth science, which could affect JPL.
The Senate’s credits bill also rejects the deep cuts proposed by the White House, but proposes to hold the funding of the scientific mission management at $ 7.3 billion, as the previous year.
The uncertainty has left JPL’s future in Limbo while waiting for an answer, said senior officials.
In addition, the whirlwind of dismissal rumors has set out the besieged employees, some of whom went to the JPL Reddit Forum to share their concerns.
“Let’s finish,” wrote a person about imminent dismissals. “This state of uncertainty is too much to manage.”
The government closed started on October 1. There is currently no end date in sight.
