Elon Musk has a ‘failure warning’ for these technology companies; says: Investors have already started betting against them
Robotaxi operations are the single biggest addition in my base case, at roughly 16,750 people covering the depots, remote support and fleet care that a large autonomous fleet needs. Tesla’s sales, service, engineering and corporate base adds about 11,300 as the fleet on the road roughly doubles, and Optimus adds about 10,600 if Fremont reaches a million robots a year. After that come vehicle manufacturing including Cybercab at about 6,700, battery cells at about 6,000, Fort Bend solar at about 5,800, Starbase Texas at about 4,900 and Terafab at about 2,900. Starbase Louisiana only reaches about 1,200 direct jobs by 2031, since construction starts next year and the first launch is 2029 at the earliest. Even in the base case, productivity gains keep vehicle manufacturing far below the roughly 106,000 workers that kind of volume would otherwise take. Using the Economic Policy Institute’s 2019 multipliers, which separate supplier jobs from jobs supported by worker spending, I estimate the companies’ end-2026 workforce supports roughly 870,000 jobs in all once both layers are added to the direct staff. By 2031 that reaches about 0.93 million in the low case, 1.41 million in the base case and 2.27 million in the high case. At US multipliers that group alone accounts for about 243,000 of the end-2026 supplier and spending jobs, and most of those would really be in China and Germany. About 158,500 people work directly for his companies today, and if robotaxi, Optimus, chips and solar ramp roughly on plan, that could reach about 250,000 by 2031. Counting suppliers and worker spending, those companies will support roughly 870,000 jobs by the end of this year and about 1.4 million by 2031 in my base case, spread across Texas, Louisiana, Nevada, Florida, California, New York, Tennessee, Mississippi and factories around the world.
Because optimus and factory automation offset most of the new hiring, to be fair about it, the low case is nearly flat,. Because companies that keep getting more productive are the ones that can keep growing and keep paying well, and the next section shows why the wider job count keeps rising even when factory headcount doesn’t, i count that as a strength,. The wider footprint Every one of these factories, launch sites and data centers buys parts, materials and services, and every paycheck gets spent at local businesses. Supplier jobs follow output, so a factory that makes more with fewer people keeps buying more parts and materials, which is why this total grows even in the low case. Worker-spending jobs follow headcount, since they come out of payroll. I’d hold these wider numbers more loosely than the direct ones, and the right way to describe them is jobs supported by Musk-company spending, since these suppliers also work for other customers. The multipliers are US national averages, so they overstate the effect of Shanghai and Berlin, where about half of Tesla’s vehicle workforce sits. The data center supplier figure is probably on the high side as well, and temporary construction work is a separate layer that isn’t in any of these totals. The bottom line Elon’s critics are entitled to their view of billionaires, but the numbers still matter. That is a lot of American families, and plenty more beyond our borders, whose livelihoods are tied to what Elon builds. You use AI every day. Now get your AI Quotient. Take the AIQ test.
Goldberg has started around 20 companies over the years, and sold his first software company at the dotcom peak in 1999. Whenever Bernie Sanders and others on the left hold Elon up as the face of everything wrong with billionaires they omit some very pertinent facts: about 158,500 people draw a paycheck directly from one of Elon Musk’s companies today, and by my estimate those companies will support roughly 870,000 jobs by the end of this year once you count the suppliers who make their parts and the local businesses where their workers spend their wages. By 2031, in my base case, that number climbs to about 1.4 million. Who works there today The direct count is about 158,500. Tesla reported 134,785 employees at the end of 2025 in its 10-K. SpaceX, which now includes xAI and X, reported more than 22,000 full-time employees at March 31 in its S-1 and has added roughly 350 more with Cursor since then. Looking out to the end of 2031, my base case reaches about 248,000 direct employees, with a low case near 171,000 and a high case around 377,000. Giga Texas had 16,506 workers in 2025 according to Travis County’s compliance report, and Elon has said Tesla’s Austin workforce will likely pass 30,000 by 2028. Starbase near Brownsville had about 4,200 SpaceX employees in March, local officials say the company plans to reach about 8,000 within 18 months, and Cameron County officials credit SpaceX with supporting more than 24,000 jobs in the area. Bastrop’s Starlink factory had 1,590 workers in May, and there is a lot more coming behind it, including 3,000 jobs in the first phase of Terafab in Grimes County under the governor’s announcement, 9,712 permanent jobs at full operation in the filing for Tesla’s Fort Bend solar factory, 1,500 at the Brookshire Megafactory by 2028 and about 250 at the Robstown lithium refinery.
Because neither company publishes headcount, the Boring Company and Neuralink add about 1,350 between them, which is an estimate from LinkedIn-based trackers.
“Tesla and SpaceX have created meaningful wealth for hundreds of thousands of employees over time and improved the retirement savings of hundreds of millions of people,” he wrote. Popularly known as Tesla Bull, Larry Goldberg is an entrepreneur and investor. He is also co-author of the book ‘The Decision Model’. Early last month, Goldberg wrote a long open letter to everyone who he wrote say that Elon Musk is the face of everything wrong with billionaires. Days later, Elon Musk quoted his letter on X, and claimed how Tesla and Spacex have created wealth for their employees over the years. Behind those figures are families making mortgage payments, putting kids through school and building careers in Austin, Brownsville, Fremont, Buffalo, Memphis and dozens, if not hundreds of other places in the US and around the world: they deserve a seat in the conversation. People will argue about wealth and taxes all day. My answer to the criticism is the arithmetic, so I went through the company filings and state records and counted the jobs as carefully as I could. I treat the total as a floor, since Tesla and SpaceX have both kept hiring since those filing dates. Everything below the company level is my own estimate, built program by program to add up to the filed totals. Where the jobs are Texas is the center of gravity.
Nevada’s audited state reports show 7,283 Tesla employees at Gigafactory 1 at an average wage of $48.24 an hour, and the new Semi factory there just entered volume production. Fremont in California is reported at 20,000 to 22,000 workers, and Hawthorne builds Falcon rockets, Dragon capsules, Raptor engines and Starlink terminals. Tesla’s Buffalo plant had 2,399 full-time workers at the end of 2025, with another 1,060 elsewhere in New York. In Memphis, xAI says it employs almost 3,000 people locally, a count that runs from electricians and engineers to cooks and construction workers, and Mississippi expects hundreds of permanent jobs from the more than $20 billion xAI is investing in Southaven. Florida’s Starship deal carries at least 600 new jobs by 2030 on top of the hundreds SpaceX already employs at the Cape. Louisiana expects 3,000 direct jobs at Starbase Louisiana over ten years at an average salary of $92,600, and projects about 34,500 construction jobs at the peak of the build. Shanghai’s last reported figure was about 20,000 workers in 2023, and Berlin is hiring back to about 12,700 people in vehicle production, with more than 1,500 further hires planned for its new battery cell plant.
The rest of the country has its own long list. The footprint reaches well beyond the US. Where the growth comes from