JPL Braces for New Layoffs as Scientists Face "Double Hit" After Wildfire Devastation

Layoffs coming to Pasadena’s JPL: Here’s what we know – Orange County Register

JPL Braces for New Layoffs as Scientists Face "Double Hit" After Wildfire Devastation

PASADENA, CA — NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory confirmed Monday it will proceed with another round of layoffs in October, compounding the misery for scientists still reeling from wildfire losses and marking the latest blow to the celebrated research institution amid sweeping federal budget cuts.

The announcement comes at a particularly devastating time: at least 200 JPL employees lost their homes in January's Eaton fire, and now face potential job loss as the laboratory grapples with funding cuts driven by the Trump administration's proposed 24% reduction to NASA's budget.

"This is a double hit for them," Rep. Judy Chu (D-Pasadena) said Monday. "They are clearly suffering from the chaos of losing their homes, dealing with difficult financial issues. To have this heaped on them on top of that is cruel and unjust."

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SIDEBAR: Understanding JPL's Unique Status

What is JPL?

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory operates as a Federally Funded Research and Development Center (FFRDC), making it unique among NASA's facilities. Unlike NASA's nine civil service field centers, JPL is managed by the California Institute of Technology under contract to NASA. This means NASA provides funding and programmatic guidance but does not directly control staffing decisions.

Origins and Mission

JPL's history dates to the 1930s, when Caltech professor Theodore von Kármán oversaw pioneering rocket propulsion work. The laboratory adopted its motto "Dare Mighty Things" as it evolved into NASA's lead center for robotic planetary exploration. In the 1960s, JPL developed spacecraft for the Ranger and Surveyor lunar missions, followed by the Mariner missions to Mercury, Venus and Mars.

Recent Achievements

JPL has maintained an impressive portfolio of active missions:

• Mars Exploration: The Perseverance and Curiosity rovers continue operating on Mars, with Perseverance collecting samples for potential future return to Earth. The Ingenuity helicopter completed multiple flights.
• Voyager Missions: Both Voyager spacecraft have entered interstellar space and continue transmitting data nearly 50 years after launch.
• Europa Clipper: Launched in October 2024, this flagship mission will study Jupiter's moon Europa and its subsurface ocean.
• Earth Science: Multiple satellites monitor atmospheric gases and climate conditions, including recent detection of high lead levels in air following the Eaton fire.

Budget Trajectory

JPL's funding has faced significant pressure in recent years:

• FY 2023: Mars Sample Return received $822 million
• FY 2024: Congress allocated only $300 million for MSR (68% cut from $949 million requested)
• FY 2025: NASA requested just $200 million for MSR
• FY 2026 Proposed: Trump administration's "skinny budget" would eliminate MSR funding entirely and cut NASA's overall budget 24.3%

The Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 imposed a 2-year cap on nondefense discretionary spending, contributing to NASA's budget constraints. NASA's FY 2024 budget was $24.875 billion, a 2% cut from 2023 and $2.3 billion less than the administration had requested.

Management Structure

NASA does not dictate staffing levels at JPL, only funding allocations. This gives JPL management autonomy over workforce decisions but leaves the laboratory vulnerable to budget fluctuations. When funding decreases, JPL must independently determine how to adjust operations and staffing to match available resources.

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Disputed Numbers, Confirmed Crisis

While JPL confirmed October layoffs are coming, officials strongly disputed reports suggesting 3,000 to 4,000 employees—up to 73% of the workforce—could be cut by Oct. 15. The laboratory called such figures "vastly incorrect and lacking attribution," though it declined to provide actual numbers.

Rep. Chu, citing Caltech lobbyists in Washington, confirmed the vastly incorrect nature of those estimates while acknowledging layoffs will occur.

Keith Cowing, founder of nasawatch.com, defended his reporting of the higher numbers, saying multiple distressed JPL employees—some crying—told him they'd heard the 4,000 figure. He said sources feared retaliation for speaking publicly. A Sept. 26 JPL Human Resources email referenced "Phase Two reorganization and upcoming layoff in October," instructing employees to update personal contact information and remove personal files from JPL devices.

Year of Cascading Cuts

The October layoffs would mark JPL's fourth major workforce reduction since January 2024. The pattern:

January 2024: 100 contractors laid off February 2024: 530 employees (8% of workforce) plus 40 contractors November 2024: 325 employees (5% of workforce) October 2025: Number undisclosed

After the November cuts, then-director Laurie Leshin assured staff it would be "the last cross-lab workforce action we will need to take in the foreseeable future," stabilizing at about 5,500 employees. That promise lasted less than a year. Leshin resigned in May 2025 "for personal reasons" and was replaced by David Gallagher, who arrived at JPL 36 years ago and led the team that built the Wide Field/Planetary Camera 2, which corrected the Hubble Space Telescope's spherical aberration.

Personal Toll on Scientists

The human cost extends beyond statistics. Employees interviewed by The California Tech described a transformed workplace culture and seemingly arbitrary selection criteria.

"First round of layoffs, people had questions about what were the whole criteria?" said a former administrative liaison who worked at JPL. "You had people who were there in lab a year, and veterans who were there twenty-five, thirty-five years. You had engineers, you had staff assistants."

One employee who served over 25 years reflected: "It was a great place to work. I didn't expect to stay as long as I did, but my career evolved organically. So it's still a gut punch. I knew layoffs were coming; I just didn't expect to be caught up in them."

Employees also described a cultural shift toward corporate management practices. "When I first came on at JPL, it was a much different environment; it was far from the corporate setting that we came from in private industries. Now, it's just the direction they're taking," said one liaison. Another operations systems engineer noted: "I chose to come to JPL because I didn't want to work for [Amazon or Google]."

The November 2024 cuts eliminated JPL's K-12 education office—unusual among NASA centers, where public outreach is typically a top priority. "Educating the general public and children about NASA and science is how a lot of people get into STEM," a former operations systems engineer lamented. The team had created hundreds of lesson plans, hosted free teacher training, and facilitated paid high school internships.

Mars Mission at Center of Crisis

The layoffs stem directly from budget turmoil surrounding the Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission—NASA's highest planetary science priority, designed to bring Martian rock samples to Earth for the first time.

The mission's costs ballooned from an original $4 billion to as much as $11 billion, with sample return pushed to 2040. In April 2024, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson declared "$11 billion is too expensive, and not returning samples until 2040 is unacceptably too long," opening the mission to industry proposals for cheaper alternatives.

An independent review board found the mission "was established with unrealistic budget and schedule expectations from the beginning" and concluded there is "currently no credible, congruent technical, nor properly margined schedule, cost, and technical baseline that can be accomplished with the likely available funding."

Congress slashed MSR funding from the requested $949 million to just $300 million for fiscal 2024—a 68% cut. For fiscal 2025, NASA requested only $200 million. California lawmakers, led by Senators Alex Padilla and then-Rep. Adam Schiff (now senator-elect), protested vigorously but unsuccessfully.

In April 2025, the Trump administration proposed eliminating MSR funding entirely as part of a "skinny budget" that would cut NASA's overall budget by 24.3%, from $24.8 billion to $18.8 billion. The White House claimed MSR is "grossly over budget" and its goals would be achieved by future human missions to Mars.

Congressional Response

Rep. Chu warned the layoffs would cause generational damage. "What we will lose is a whole generation of scientists who developed expertise in cutting edge space missions," including climate and air quality research. She noted space program innovations led to technologies like camera phones and freeze-dried foods.

Chu and other lawmakers drafted a bipartisan letter urging President Trump and congressional leaders to protect NASA and NOAA funding, arguing both agencies are essential for scientific discovery and public safety, including detecting hurricanes, floods and dangerous windstorms.

Senator Alex Padilla said in a statement that the cuts are "devastating for our local workforce and will set California and America's scientific and space leadership back significantly at this critical moment." He warned that the talented JPL workforce "represents a national asset that we cannot afford to lose, and if this uniquely talented workforce is lost to the private sector, it will be near impossible to reassemble."

Compounding Crises

The timing couldn't be worse for JPL's Pasadena-area workforce. The January Eaton fire impacted over 1,000 JPL employees, with nearly 200 losing their homes entirely. JPL launched a disaster relief fund that raised over $2 million.

Among those affected: JPL scientists Jason Rhodes and Alina Kiessling, who lost their Altadena home while preparing to bring home newborn twins. "It went from us preparing to leave to deciding we had to leave right away. Within just a couple of minutes," Rhodes recalled.

The crisis occurs against a backdrop of other workforce pressures. In May 2025, JPL ended telework policies, requiring all 5,500+ employees to return to in-person work or resign—a move some employees described as a "silent layoff" to avoid severance payments. The policy posed particular hardships for fire-displaced workers and those living outside California. "Employees who do not return by their required date will be considered to have resigned," JPL officials stated in an email to employees.

Additionally, JPL management launched an anti-union website in September 2025 as employees explored unionization—timing that union advocates called "union busting" amid layoff threats.

Uncertain Future

The October layoffs coincide with a federal government shutdown now in its sixth day. President Trump initially threatened thousands of federal layoffs during the shutdown but walked back that position Monday, though job losses remain possible if Congress doesn't restore funding.

JPL's long history of achievements—from the Viking and Voyager missions of the 1970s to recent Mars rovers and the Europa Clipper mission—faces an uncertain future. As a federally funded research center managed by Caltech rather than NASA directly, JPL occupies a unique position that may offer some insulation from government shutdowns but leaves it vulnerable to NASA budget decisions.

Whether October's cuts fulfill former director Leshin's earlier promise of stabilization or mark another step in JPL's downsizing remains unclear. What is certain: hundreds of scientists who've dedicated careers to exploring the cosmos now face their own uncertain futures.

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Sources

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