Volkswagen plans to cut 100,000 jobs: Reports

GERMANY: Volkswagen is staring down the barrel of its own history. Chief executive Oliver Blume is reportedly drawing up plans to axe up to 100,000 jobs and shutter four German plants, in what would be the most brutal restructuring the carmaker has attempted in 89 years on the road, according to a report in Manager Magazin.

The numbers are eye-watering even by Volkswagen’s own sprawling standards. The carmaker would also slash planned investment by roughly 15 per cent, trimming just over €130 billion ($148 billion) earmarked for the next five years. Blume and chief financial officer Arno Antlitz reportedly want to go further still, restructuring the group by spinning off the core VW brand and its parts operations into standalone entities, according to the magazine’s sources.

The pain would not stop at job cuts. Production is set to wind down at plants in Hanover, Zwickau and Emden, as well as at Audi’s Neckarsulm site, once current model lines run their course, the report added. That goes well beyond an existing plan to cut 50,000 jobs, and lands awkwardly alongside a 2024 agreement with unions that explicitly rules out German plant closures this decade.

Unsurprisingly, Volkswagen’s works council and Germany’s formidable IG Metall union are not taking it lying down. In a joint statement, they warned bluntly that they would do everything in their power to block any such move. Volkswagen itself stayed coy on specifics, with a spokesperson declining to comment on what was termed confidential documents, while insisting that the entire group, brands and subsidiaries included, must undergo far-reaching change, with any final decisions to be thrashed out and approved by the company’s governing bodies.

The scale becomes clearer set against the numbers. Volkswagen’s global workforce stood at 667,164 in the 2025 financial year, with roughly 43 per cent based in Germany, meaning the proposed cuts would claw out close to 15 per cent of the entire workforce in one stroke. The plans reportedly form part of Blume’s “Group Target Picture” concept for 2030, already presented to the executive board and due in front of the supervisory board on 9 July.

Blume is fighting on every front at once: tariffs squeezing margins, Chinese rivals undercutting on price and technology, and an electric vehicle transition that has hammered earnings rather than rescued them. He has pledged to slim the group’s sprawling portfolio back to its automotive core. Investors, notably, were not rattled. VW shares barely budged in mid-morning trade, comfortably outperforming Germany’s blue-chip DAX index, which slid 1.1 per cent. Whether the workforce takes the news with the same equanimity as the markets is, for now, a rather different question.