Tesla falls as Elon Musk says he wants to cut 10% of staff at the EV maker because he's got a 'super bad feeling' about the economy

Elon Musk. Picture Alliance/Getty Images

• Tesla shares fell 9% on Friday following a Reuters report that CEO Elon Musk wants to cut 10% of staff.
• Reuters reviewed an email Musk sent to Tesla execs saying he had a "bad feeling" about the economy.
• Musk has previously said the US is moving toward a recession.

Tesla shares dropped on Friday after CEO Elon Musk told employees at the electric-vehicle maker that he was pessimistic about the state of the economy and thinking about cutting jobs. 

Musk said he had a "super bad feeling" about the economy and needed to cut about 10% of jobs at Tesla, reported Reuters, citing an email to executives it had seen. Musk clarified the cuts would apply only to salaried employees,  according to Electrek, and layoffs would not apply to workers building cars, battery packs, or installing solar components. 

The stock slid 9.2% to finish at $703.55, the lowest close since May 25. The share price this year has tumbled 33% as part of a broader sell-off in the tech sector that's shoved the Nasdaq Composite into a bear market . 

Reuters reported the brief email titled "pause all hiring worldwide" was sent on Thursday, arriving two days after Musk told Tesla staff to return to the workplace or leave their jobs. 

Musk didn't elaborate on the reasons for his "super bad feeling" in the email, Reuters reported.

About 100,000 people worked for Tesla and its subsidiaries, said the company's annual report for 2021 filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. 

Musk, who tops Forbes' list of the world's richest people, in May told the All-In tech conference he believed the US was in a recession that would worsen.

He said the recession could last anywhere from a year to 18 months.

"Recessions are not necessarily a bad thing," he said via video at the conference. "I've been through a few of them. And what tends to happen is if you have a boom that goes on too long, you get a misallocation of capital. It starts raining money on fools, basically."

Tesla shares have also been under pressure this year following Musk's $44 billion bid to purchase Twitter. The social-media company on Friday said a mandatory 30-day waiting period for the deal had expired. This puts Musk closer to clinching the deal, which is still subject to approval by Twitter shareholders and other regulations.

Also on Friday, Coinbase shares fell 9.7% after the crypto exchange said on Thursday it would rescind a number of already-accepted job offers and extend a pause in hiring, citing "current market conditions." The cryptocurrency market has slumped this year and has lost about half its value since a high mark of $3 trillion in November.