A Tesla worker who was laid off a month after he joined says he can't pay his rent

• Tesla laid off more than 10% of its workforce, a memo sent by CEO Elon Musk showed.

• One worker who lost his job a month after joining Tesla told KVUE he couldn't pay his rent.

• The layoffs follow a difficult first quarter for Tesla, which saw a 20% sales drop.

An employee who'd been working at Tesla for about a month learned he'd been laid off on Monday, local news station KVUE reported.

Ezekiel Love told the Texas-based station that he joined the EV maker a month ago to help assemble Model Y cars at its headquarters, but then received a termination letter on Monday, which KVUE included in its news segment.

Love said, "Wow, no warning at all. I don't have a job, I can't pay my rent."

He added, "They're supposed to be leading in innovation, I feel like that would have been the best opportunity for me to learn manufacturing."

Tesla CEO Elon Musk sent a company-wide email close to midnight on Sunday announcing the company was laying off "more than 10%" of the workforce, globally. He said in the memo that the job cuts were to prepare the firm for its "next phase of growth."

But some Tesla employees only found out when they arrived at work on Monday. As Business Insider's Grace Kay reported, security told some of the workers that if their ID badges didn't work, they were no longer employed.