BMW job cuts

Where things stand

BMW is cutting about 8,000 jobs by 2027, roughly 5% of its staff, in administration and development, and is offering severance to volunteers instead of forcing redundancies. FAZ reports half the cuts fall in Germany and links them to collapsing Chinese sales.

BMW employs about 154,000 people, roughly half of them in Germany. Under its new chief executive Milan Nedeljković, the carmaker plans to remove around 8,000 of those posts by 2027, about 5% of the workforce, concentrating the reductions in administration and development rather than in production. Instead of compulsory redundancies, BMW says it will offer severance packages to employees who leave voluntarily. FAZ ties the decision to a slump in BMW's sales in China, its most important growth market, and argues that German carmakers have fallen behind to the point where they now depend on Chinese technology to keep up.