Elon Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO, has said that the headcount in the electronic vehicle manufacturing company will increase over the next year. This statement, on Saturday, comes after the plans to make cuts at the company anticipating the poor state of the economy in the coming days. 

A Twitter account predicted that Tesla’s staff would rise over 12 months, to which the entrepreneur replied, “Total headcount will increase, but salaried should be fairly flat”. 

On Friday, Reuters reported that Musk had told Tesla employees in an email that he had a bad feeling about the US economy and would need to lay off 10% of the workforce.

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The company employs 100,000 people and Musk recently called for a return to the work-from-office module. The 50-year-old didn’t have very kind words for the American work ethic but was all praises for the Chinese workers in Tesla’s Shanghai giga-factory. Local journalists have labelled it “giga sweatshop”. 

Musk has previously glorified Chinese work culture as well, not acknowledging that the ‘996’ model where people work from 9AM in the morning to 9 PM in the evening, six days a week, has come under review by the Chinese government. 

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In his email, Musk had written, “Anyone who wishes to do remote work must be in the office for a minimum (and I mean *minimum*) of 40 hours per week or depart Tesla. This is less than we ask of factory workers”, adding that the employees’ offices must be a “main Tesla office, not a remote branch office unrelated to the job duties”. He added, “Tesla has and will create and actually manufacture the most exciting and meaningful products of any company on Earth. This will not happen by phoning it in”. 

Musk also concluded, “If you don’t show up, we will assume you have resigned”.