Employees at California’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory are bracing for layoffs as the U.S. government heads into its second week of a shutdown linked to a stalled budget agreement.
The storied research and development center in La Cañada-Flintridge is known for its work on robotic space exploration, including Mars Rovers and deep-space probes, as well as its cutting-edge satellite networks that monitor Earth. It is funded by NASA and managed by the California Institute of Technology.
Agency officials confirmed that layoffs are imminent this month, but declined to provide an exact number of affected employees. JPL currently employs about 5,500 people after undergoing two rounds of layoffs affecting 855 people last year.
The agency watchdog website NASAwatch.com reported that layoffs would be as high as 4,000, but sources rejected that, with Rep. Judy Chu (D-Monterey Park) telling the Los Angeles Daily News the number is “vastly incorrect.”
In a statement provided to NASAwatch.com and shared with The Times, agency officials said JPL is “not the source of any communication suggesting that 4,000 of the 5,500 JPL employees could by gone by 15 October 2025.”
“The Laboratory has been very transparent in regular updates to employees that some layoffs are expected in October, but the number in your post is vastly incorrect and lacks attribution,” the statement said.
Much will depend on how the budget stalemate in Congress plays out. The U.S. government is currently shut down because the House and the Senate have not reached an agreement on how to fund federal operations.
No employees at JPL have been furloughed because of the shutdown, since they are CalTech employees and not employees of the federal government.
But JPL lives and dies by the budget. In May, the Trump administration proposed a massive $6-billion cut from NASA’s $24.8-billion budget, or roughly 24%. The cuts heavily targeted planetary, astrophysics and Earth-observation missions that would affect JPL’s work.
The current proposals from the House and Senate appropriations committees both would cut less than that, but still represent different visions for the agency this year.
The House appropriations bill broadly rejects Trump’s original proposal and keep NASA’s top-line budget at $24.8 billion. But the bill shifts some resources within the agency, including greater allocations for human space exploration and selective cuts of more than $1 billion from NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, which oversees space and Earth science research, that could affect JPL.
The Senate appropriations bill similarly rejects the deep cuts proposed by the White House, but proposes holding the Science Mission Directorate funding at $7.3 billion, the same as the year prior.
The uncertainty has left JPL’s future in limbo while it awaits an answer, top officials said.
What’s more, the swirl of layoff rumors has strained beleaguered employees, some of whom have taken to JPL’s reddit forum to share their concerns.
“Let’s just get done with it,” one person wrote of the impending layoffs. “This state of uncertainty is too much to deal with.”
The government shutdown began on Oct. 1. There is currently no end date in sight.
