In December 2008, the company informed employees by mail that, as a consequence of the economic situation, they would be laying off 100 workers from the company's Austrian facility in Wiener Neustadt. At that time, the facility employed 700 of the company's 2,100 worldwide workforce. The wider market for general aircraft had plummeted as an impact of the Great Recession; the gradual recovery from this event would take many years and would not be without consequence on several of Diamond's existing production lines and development programmes.