Rivian is no longer sharing publicly how many people work at its Normal manufacturing plant – a change in longstanding practice for an electric automaker that’s received millions of dollars in publicly funded tax breaks. And evidence suggests Rivian’s headcount in Normal is much lower than previously thought.
Until recently, media outlets like WGLT could ask for and receive the number of employees working at Rivian’s Normal plant. The public watched as the number soared – from 350 people in 2020 to around 8,000 just three years later. The hiring was so fast it strained Bloomington-Normal’s housing market.
Now, WGLT doesn’t know how many people work at Rivian. Neither does Normal’s mayor or others.
In a recent email, a Rivian spokesperson said they would no longer provide a headcount for Normal. They also said the 8,000 figure previously given was no longer accurate.
The bigger the company, the bigger the responsibility they have to their community, said Luke Capizzo, a PR researcher, practitioner and assistant professor at Michigan State who’s worked in manufacturing and technology. A company receiving taxpayer money only adds to that.
“That raises the responsibility bar even higher, because it’s not just the immediate economic impact for employees, their families and the immediate circle of economic implications around those folks. But it's also the fact that every person in that community put their money – through their tax dollars – into investing in this company being there,” Capizzo said.
Stealth mode (again)
The unwillingness to share job numbers is only the latest example of Rivian’s secretive nature. The company literally went into what founder and CEO RJ Scaringe called “stealth mode” in 2017, after being gifted tax breaks by taxpayers. Local elected officials have said the company can be reluctant to share information, even with them. WGLT has tried unsuccessfully for months to arrange a visit to see Rivian’s massive addition for the new R2 model going into production next year.
“As a public company, Rivian discloses its employee count in its 10K filing. We do not break out employee count by location,” a Rivian spokesperson said Friday. She did not provide a reason why not.
That 10K filing with the SEC includes only a companywide number – 14,861 as of Dec. 31, 2024. Thousands of those people don’t work in Normal or Illinois.
Rivian’s withholding of job numbers is unusual among McLean County’s largest employers, even the private ones. When asked, organizations like State Farm (13,000), Carle Health (2,061), OSF Healthcare (2,058), and Ferrero (740) were willing to provide at least average recent numbers. When WGLT recently did a series on manufacturing, smaller companies like ACC Electronix (over 100) and Zentech (66) willingly shared headcounts.
Rivian is probably McLean County’s second-largest employer, behind only State Farm. Knowing how many people work there can help school districts, city planners, retailers, social service agencies and others plan for what the community will need to serve its residents.
Jobs data from major employers is important, said Patrick Hoban, CEO of the Bloomington-Normal Economic Development Council. He said he was not familiar with Rivian’s new policy.
“Those numbers matter, not just for the HR and the workforce, but also for our educational institutions, trying to figure out how many programs they need to gear up for, and also when it comes to the suppliers and the buyers – anything that has to do with induced [economic impact] – people need to know that employment is steady and hopefully going up, because that’s how you get the retail. It’s all based off those wages and steady growth,” Hoban said.
In an interview, WGLT asked Normal Mayor Chris Koos how many people he thought worked at Rivian. He guessed 8,500. The real number is likely substantially less.
Rivian reported 7,410 employees statewide in Illinois (not just Normal) in a tax-incentive agreement with the state signed on May 1, 2025. That’s 1,177 fewer than the 8,587 statewide headcount that Rivian provided state officials in May 2024. Both of those statewide counts would likely include some employees in Chicago, where Rivian operates a showroom space. A Rivian manufacturing executive appeared to say there were just 5,000 workers there during a video tour posted in May on the Out of Spec Reviews YouTube channel.
Government data appears to confirm a sharp decline in jobs at Rivian. McLean County had 8,130 manufacturing jobs to start 2025, down 27% from the start of 2024 when the industry’s headcount peaked at 11,090, according to Illinois Department of Employment Security data.
Working theories
So how did Rivian shrink by over 1,000 employees without anybody noticing? We don’t know. Natural attrition or job transfers are one explanation. No single mass layoff events were reported to the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity [DCEO], as is required when a company sheds at least 250 full-timers or over one-third of their full-time workforce.
Koos theorized that Rivian’s Normal plant is in great “flux” at the moment, as it prepares for the start of R2 production in 2026 and begins construction of a second plant in Georgia.
“That company has always been reluctant to talk about things,” he said.
Rivian may also be withholding it for competitive reasons, and not just with other automakers, said Nate Jensen, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin who’s studied transparency issues surrounding economic development. Rivian will soon have two manufacturing plants – one in Normal, the other in Georgia – and Jensen said it’s possible one site will cannibalize jobs from the other. The company might not want its employment patterns in plain view.
“They have these two audiences who both want all the jobs, and they have economic development incentive deals at both locations,” Jensen said.
The pullback from disclosing job numbers has been gradual. Early on, WGLT was able to get Normal employee counts from a Normal-based company spokesperson whenever it asked. In November 2024, Rivian no longer had a locally based spokesperson and said it would only give the number out once a year. By August 2025, Rivian said it would not provide the number at all.
Some auto manufacturers are more willing to share site-specific jobs data. Ford includes employee counts, by plant, on its website. GM provided data for several plants when requested by WGLT.
Like Ford and GM, Rivian is a publicly traded company. Rivian has previously cited regulatory restrictions surrounding what it can or can’t say at any given time.
“You have to let people know things so that people are not getting inside information, and everyone is hearing the same thing at the same time for everyone that could be a public investor in that company,” said Capizzo, the Michigan State professor. “There are some moments – and maybe this could be one of them – where the investor-relations side of the communications team probably should be talking to the community relations and PR folks to understand how those things may work together. That if you’re withholding some of this information, it might cause some challenges reputationally as well.”
There’s value – often hard to quantify – for a large manufacturer to maintain a positive relationship built on trust with its hometown community, he said.
“And unfortunately, I think that there are more economic [reasons] for companies to not take that kind of trust as seriously as they used to,” Capizzo said. “And I think there's probably a difference in legacy manufacturers versus these newer companies that are coming out of a more tech-focused environment and the norms and behaviors of that environment.”
What’s required
Rivian has been subject to certain disclosure and reporting requirements tied to the tax breaks it’s received, though even those don’t provide an easy answer.
The local property tax breaks, for example, required Rivian to hit certain employee and thresholds, which had to be verified. That earned Rivian around $3 million over five years. That agreement and its reporting requirements are no longer active.
Rivian is in line to receive $827 million in state tax breaks and other incentives over the next 30 years, under a deal announced last year. It’s required to create at least 559 new jobs by 2029, retain at least 6,000 jobs, and invest $1.5 billion for that project. The company also arranged a smaller set of incentives for creation of a nearby supplier park, also through the state’s REV tax credit program.
But neither of those REV agreements have been “placed in service yet,” meaning Rivian has not yet been required to formally report any results, according to a DCEO spokesperson. She did not respond to WGLT’s question about what DCEO thinks about Rivian’s change in reporting policy.
Across the country, there’s wide variance in what companies are required to disclose when receiving taxpayer assistance, said Jensen, the professor from Texas. He said it’s more common that specific job numbers are not required to be disclosed in the “very opaque” world of economic development, though Jensen would advise otherwise.
“There’s a lot of perception that these are backroom deals,” Jensen said. “And whether it’s true or not, I think the less information you give, the more likely people are going to believe that there's nefarious reasons for these projects.”
