A common view of manufacturing strains on the Mercedes-Benz meeting plant on June 4, 2025 in Rastatt, Germany.
Florian Wiegand | Getty Images News | Getty Images
An ideal storm of business and economic challenges have weighed on Germany’s autos sector, which has shed tens of 1000’s of jobs over a one-year stretch to the tip of June.
Over that interval, Germany’s autos business, one of many European nation’s largest sectors, has seen job cuts of near 7% of the workforce, or round 51,500 positions, in line with new analysis from EY primarily based on knowledge from the German statistics workplace Destatis.
Overall job losses throughout the German business amounted to round 114,000 within the 12 months to June 30 this yr, the research famous. The figures counsel virtually half the cuts had been incurred by the autos sector.
“No other industrial sector has recorded such a strong reduction in employment,” the report stated, in line with a CNBC translation. The research flagged that 112,000 jobs have been reduce within the autos sector, in comparison with the 2019 interval previous the Covid-19 pandemic.
Jan Brorhilker, managing companion of the reassurance division at EY in Germany, stated in a press launch that the job reductions got here in a response to the tough state of affairs of the German auto business.
“Massive profit declines, overcapacities, and ailing foreign markets make a marked reduction of jobs impossible to avoid,” he stated, in line with a CNBC translation.
EY’s report additionally famous that revenues within the sector pulled again 1.6% within the second quarter of 2025 in comparison with the identical interval within the earlier yr. German auto big Volkswagen, for one, reported a pointy drop in second-quarter revenue and lowered its full-year steerage.
The decline within the auto sector is notably a smaller drop than the two.1% loss in revenues that the general German business is dealing with.
Mounting struggles
Germany’s auto business has lengthy battled a large number of challenges, such as stark Chinese competitors on prices and innovation, as properly as difficulties to achieve floor within the electric vehicle race, which some auto makers and analysts have attributed to federal authorities paperwork and regulation.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s commerce coverage has added to issues. Germany, and particularly its autos sector, are closely export oriented and depend the U.S. as certainly one of their greatest markets, the place the ‘Made in Germany’ label has traditionally been seen as an indication of high quality.
Recent knowledge from Destatis confirmed that auto and auto half exports to the U.S. declined by 8.6% within the first half of 2025, in comparison with the identical interval final yr. Auto makers have additionally repeatedly warned of the potential influence of tariffs and surrounding uncertainty.
The business might get pleasure from some reduction after details of the usEU commerce settlement emerged earlier this months. Autos can be topic to fifteen% duties, however solely after the EU makes laws adjustments to scale back its industrial levies.
The state of Germany’s general economic system has additionally been a headwind for the autos sector, with the nation’s annual gross home product declining in each 2023 and 2024. This year additionally seems to be off to a gradual begin: after Europe’s largest economic system recorded 0.3% development within the first quarter, the newest figures for the second quarter indicated a 0.3% decline.
Looking forward, EY’s Brorhilker says he expects German auto exports to each the U.S. and China to remain beneath strain, with the previous being impacted by tariffs and the latter by weakening demand, which can be a home problem.
As numerous German industrial giants are at present present process restructuring or price discount applications, “the number of industry jobs will keep falling,” Brorhilker stated.