Solyndra Layoffs: Bigger Than Expected

When Solyndra closed, it announced that it would be laying off around 1,100 employees, those who worked full-time for the company and those who were only temporary employees. However, it seems as though those figures were a little off, as there were actually approximately 1,861 employees who lost their job when the Solyndra Company, known for manufacturing solar panels, closed the doors on its business and basically stopped all operations. The information on the number of employees who were laid off came from the United States Labor Department. The documents showed that there were closer to 2,000 individuals who lost their job when the company shut down but aside from that, documents showed that back in 2011, even though the company was not selling the panels made in the previous year, they still chose to increase the production of panels.

When Solyndra finally closed back in August of 2011, the company had tons of inventories that had not been sold. In fact, there were enough inventories to be provided to over 20,000 homes, which is definitely a whole lot of unsold inventory. With the new information exposed, it is expected that more anger will surround Solyndra, especially since many people were already upset about its closing. Many people were upset that the company closed down because back in 2009, towards the end of the recession, the United States Department of Energy provided the company with a federal loan that was worth about $535 million.

One Republican political consultant, Dan Schnur, believes that this type of information is what will help Romney during the presidential elections. In fact, Mitt Romeny stood in front of the factory just a month ago, talking about economic failure and how Solyndra was actually a symbol of that type of failure in this economy. Just two years before that, the President of the United States, Barack Obama, had stood in front of the company and said the exact opposite of Romney. Romney may use this as a prime example of mistakes Obama has made during his time as President in attempts of getting more votes from people who may have originally sided with Obama.

It seems as though both the White House Press Office and The Energy Department downplayed the entire situation with Solyndra, especially after the Labor Department found out the truth about the number of people who lost their job because of the company and its failure. The company did not make the right business decisions and because of that, it did not help with the expansion of the labor market in the United States. Instead, because of its poor decisions, more people were put out of work and stuck looking for a job in the United States.