Roughly 550 employees at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory are losing their jobs today in the fourth round of layoffs since the beginning of last year. This latest cut adds to mounting uncertainty around the future of the federally funded research center and the missions it’s involved in.
In an update on Monday, JPL director Dave Gallagher announced that the California-based lab will undergo a staff reduction affecting approximately 11% of its workforce across technical, business, and support areas. The reduction is part of a reorganization that began in July and is not related to the current government shutdown, according to the update.
“I recognize this is a tremendous amount of change in a short period of time and will be challenging for our entire community in the coming weeks,” Gallagher wrote in an internal memo to JPL employees, according to NASA Watch.
“While not easy, I believe taking these actions now will help the Lab transform at the scale and pace necessary to help achieve humanity’s boldest ambitions in space,” he said.
Seemingly endless blows to JPL’s workforce
With the addition of this most recent staff reduction, JPL has laid off more than 1,500 staffers and contractors in four rounds of cuts since January 2024. The first round saw 100 contractors sacked, followed by 530 staffers and another 40 contractors in February 2024. In November of that year, 325 more employees were let go.
Laurie Leshin, director of the lab during the 2024 layoffs, cited budget constraints and uncertainties surrounding the JPL-spearheaded Mars Sample Return mission as the reason for the cuts. In May 2025—just days after President Donald Trump released his “skinny” budget request for fiscal year 2026—she resigned due to “personal reasons” and was replaced by Gallagher.
That budget request sought to reduce NASA’s overall budget by nearly $6 billion compared to 2025, putting some of the agency’s most ambitious missions on the chopping block. Now, the fate of those missions hangs in the balance as we enter the third week of a government shutdown due to a budget dispute.
NASA at odds with its own mission
Two days before the shutdown, the Democratic staff of the Senate Commerce Committee released a report alleging that the White House budget office has been pushing NASA to carry out the “devastating” cuts outlined in the 2026 budget proposal for months, citing evidence gleaned from whistleblower documents and interviews.
Again, JPL said this latest staff cut is part of a reorganization process that’s unrelated to the government shutdown. That said, it’s unfolding amid perceived political pressure to downsize NASA regardless of whether Trump’s budget request for the agency is ultimately approved.
“I have spoken with multiple people who have been told point-blank that is what is happening,” Keith Cowing, an astrobiologist and former NASA employee who now serves as editor of NASA Watch, told Gizmodo. “[NASA] had an internal verbal order saying this is the budget you work to, and if there’s a shutdown, that’s where we go,” Cowing said.
The Trump administration’s effort to gut NASA’s workforce undermines its goal of beating China back to the Moon and maintaining U.S. leadership in space. Even if NASA is spared from major budget cuts and key mission cancellations, the loss of thousands of engineers and scientists will inevitably hamper its ability to meet such ambitious objectives.
“If you really want NASA to be that leader—not just to win, but also to show why we won—you would be doing the exact opposite of what you’re doing at NASA right now,” Cowing said.
JPL’s press office declined to comment and instead referred Gizmodo to the workforce update made Monday.