German Manufacturing Job Losses Top 100,000 With Daimler Cuts

(Bloomberg) --

Germany may have narrowly avoided a recession in the third quarter but pressure on the country’s industrial champions shows no sign of abating.

Daimler AG said Friday it will shed more than 10,000 positions, lifting the tally of job cuts announced this year across Germany’s manufacturing sector to more than 100,000, according to Bloomberg calculations.

Companies from Volkswagen AG to Siemens AG are letting workers go as Germany’s powerful automotive industry struggles with a shift toward electrification and self-driving cars and makers of machinery and robots are hit by slower exports and trade disputes. Producers of renowned German products such as Meissen porcelain and WMF kitchenware are also trimming their workforces.

While the country’s unemployment rate, at 5%, remains close to its historic low, the number of freelancers is rising and short-term work has been creeping up since last year.

Automotive companies in particular are tightening their belts. Daimler alone pledged to save a total of at least 1.4 billion euros ($1.5 billion) in personnel expenses.

The full effect of the cuts -- which also affect units of German companies abroad --- may not be felt immediately. Labor laws and powerful unions make it difficult to fire workers, and many large companies have agreements banning forced dismissals, meaning job-cut programs have voluntary elements and sometimes run for years.

Still, the deteriorating prospects for employment could turn into a headache for the German government, which has been considering following countries from China to the U.K. in beefing up investments to stimulate its economy.

Here is a rundown of the main job cuts announced since the beginning of the year by German industrial companies. The tally includes foreign corporations that have announced cuts affecting staff in Europe’s biggest economy. It excludes the financial industry, cuts that remain unconfirmed, and programs where companies have not yet specified how many jobs will go.

--With assistance from Elisabeth Behrmann, Siddharth Philip, Brian Parkin, Oliver Sachgau, Christoph Rauwald and Andrew Blackman.

To contact the reporter on this story: Richard Weiss in Frankfurt at rweiss5@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Daniel Schaefer at dschaefer36@bloomberg.net, Stefan Nicola, Iain Rogers

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.