The Bosch group, one of Germany’s leading industrial players, has announced a far-reaching job cut programme. On 25 September the company said it would cut an additional 13,000 positions by 2030. Bosch had already announced 5,550 layoffs in November 2024.
The workforce reduction will primarily focus on Bosch’s automotive supply business in Germany. Bosch is the largest automotive supplier in the world with 60 per cent of its turnover of €90 billion in 2024 coming from the automobile sector.
The job losses will be centred in Southwestern Germany with the plants in Feuerbach (3,500 cuts), Schwieberdingen (1,750 cuts), Bühl (1,550 cuts), and Homburg (1,250 cuts) most affected.
In a press release the company called the job cuts “unavoidable” citing a challenging economic and market environment for Bosch Mobility, the automotive division. The car market was slowing down as a whole, the company said, but specifically, the electric vehicle and hydrogen power businesses – once hailed as sectors of the future into which Bosch had invested tens of billions of Euros – were facing difficulties.
“The market penetration of future technologies such as electric mobility and automated driving is also being significantly delayed, and demand in Bosch’s sales markets is shifting extensively to regions outside Europe. This is compounded by ongoing structural change and very high price and competitive pressure in the global automotive industry”.
The company said it had to cut costs by €2.5 billion annually to stay competitive and finance necessary investments.
CEO Stefan Grosch said: “We urgently need to work on our competitiveness in the mobility sector and continue to reduce our costs on a permanent basis. We are pulling many levers to achieve this. Unfortunately, this means that we will have to cut more jobs than we have already announced. This pains us greatly, but unfortunately there is no way around it.”
The news have sent a shockwave through Germany. Bosch Mobility work council leader Frank Sell said: “We firmly reject staff cuts on this historic scale – without simultaneous commitments to secure our locations in Germany! Bosch is squandering trust and causing social devastation in many regions.” Sell added that many Bosch employees had broken out in tears when given the news.
The job cuts at Bosch coincide with layoffs and cutbacks by many other key players of Germany’s automobile industry. According to Verband der Automobilindustrie (VDA), an industry association, in the last two years alone the German automotive sector has shed 55,000 jobs – a loss of 7 per cent down to 718,200 employees. Auto parts suppliers have been hit the hardest with employment numbers falling by almost 12 per cent to 236,700 workers.
