Germany: four out of ten companies ready to lay off employees in 2025
Survey by the Iw Economic Institute: crisis hits industry hardest, tens of thousands of jobs at stake. And GDP growth estimates get even worse
2' min read
2' min read
Volkswagen, but also Ford, Thyssen-Krupp, Bosch, Audi: the list of large groups planning staff cuts in Germany is long. The most affected sector is industry, but even a software giant like Sap plans to leave 3,500 employees at home. The shadow of economic stagnation stretches over the hitherto resilient labour market: the unemployment rate is still around 6%, but behind the statistics there are growing tensions.
The search
.According to a survey of more than 2,000 companies conducted by the Cologne-based economic institute Iw, four out of ten companies are planning to downsize their workforce in 2025. This is a consequence of the dark outlook for the future: 40 per cent of the sample expect business to get worse next year and only one fifth are optimistic.
Private sector investment in Germany is already low: this is one of the factors explaining the decline in productivity. And 40 per cent of the companies surveyed by Iw expect a decrease in 2025.
For the Ifo Institute, the labour market outlook is also deteriorating. In November, the employment barometer fell to its lowest level since the summer of 2020, with the sixth consecutive monthly decline. 'More and more companies are stopping hiring and indeed increasingly discussing cuts,' said Klaus Wohlrabe, head of surveys at the institute.
Cuts, cuts, cuts
.If Volkswagen has threatened to close up to three plants, with tens of thousands of potential redundancies, the automotive parts supplier, Schaeffler, announced in early November 2,800 redundancies in Germany (and 3,700 in Europe). In the same boat Bosch: cuts could affect between 8,000 and 10,000 jobs in Germany, according to the statement of the vice chairman of the supervisory board, Frank Sell, on 11 December.
