GM lays off hundreds of workers while restructuring its design engineering team
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- GM issued layoff notices to some workers on Friday morning, mostly based in its Tech Center in Warren, Michigan.
- "We're restructuring our design engineering team," a GM spokesperson wrote to Business Insider.
- Three days prior to the layoffs, GM posted strong third-quarter earnings, sending the stock surging 15%.
General Motors is cutting hundreds of workers as it restructures its design engineering team.
The vehicle company's layoffs mostly affected its tech center in Warren, Michigan, a representative confirmed to Business Insider. The layoffs were in the "low hundreds," and were announced Friday morning.
"We're restructuring our design engineering team to strengthen our core architectural design engineering capabilities," a GM spokesperson wrote in a statement to Business Insider. "As a result, a number of CAD execution roles have been eliminated."
The spokesperson wrote that they "recognize the efforts and accomplishments of the impacted team members, and we thank them for their contributions."
Bloomberg first reported the layoffs, citing a 7 a.m. message on Slack to affected employees pointing to "business conditions."
Three days prior to the layoffs, GM posted strong third-quarter earnings, sending the company's stock surging 15%, the biggest single-day gain since 2020.
GM also raised its profit outlook in its third-quarter earnings, citing less tariff pressure and diminished electric vehicle losses.
The automaker — which owns Chevrolet, GMC, Buick, and Cadillac — has been squeezed by tariffs and EVs in the past year. In July, the company said that tariffs had cut $1.1 billion off its profits. In a regulatory filing earlier this month, the company said that it was taking $1.6 billion in charges over its EV plan rollback.
Other automakers are also downsizing. On Thursday, electric vehicle maker Rivian planned to cut 600 jobs, affecting 4.5% of the staff, in the wake of the $7,500 EV tax credit expiring in the US.
"These are not changes that were made lightly," Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe wrote in a memo. "With the changing operating backdrop, we had to rethink how we are scaling our go-to-market functions."