Germany’s largest automotive supplier Bosch has tightened its austerity measures due to the industry crisis. The technology group announced plans to cut around 13,000 jobs in its Mobility division. The sites particularly affected are Feuerbach, Schieberdingen, Waiblingen, Bühl, and Homburg. The planned job cuts extend beyond manufacturing to central functions such as development, sales, and administration. The measures cover both combustion engines and electric drives, though the cuts are weighted towards the combustion engine segment. Bosch intends to complete the job reduction programme by the end of 2030.

Already in 2024 Bosch announced 9,000 jobs in the Mobility division. According to member of the board of management and director of industrial relations Stefan Gosch, half of these reductions have since been carried out. The group’s largest division employs 230,000 people worldwide, around 70,000 of them in Germany. Bosch employs 417,000 people globally (as of the end of 2024). Together with other business areas, the long-established foundation-owned company has cut around 15,000 jobs worldwide since 2024, the majority of them in Germany.

At Bosch, employment protection is in place until 2027. This rules out redundancies for operational reasons until then. When asked about the potential additional costs of the staff cuts in the form of severance payments, company management declined to provide concrete figures. The financial impact could not yet be assessed, said Gosch at the company’s headquarters in Gerlingen near Stuttgart.

According to him, the job cuts are a consequence of weak demand for electric cars, the gradual transition away from combustion engines, and fierce competition in China. This is leading to costly overcapacity. „We are feeling extreme pressure on earnings", he said. The job cuts are intended to help reduce annual expenses in the Mobility division by 2.5 billion euros.

Bosch is aiming for an operating margin of 7%, which it intends to achieve by 2026. In 2024, the operating profit margin fell to 3.5% from 4.8%. Group revenues remained nearly stable at 91 billion euros, of which the Mobility division accounted for 56 billion euros. For the current year, Bosch expects weak business performance.

German automotive suppliers are in crisis. The industry has already seen thousands of jobs cut. Many medium-sized companies are fighting for survival, and a wave of insolvencies is sweeping through the sector. At ZF, Germany’s second-largest automotive supplier, further cuts are also looming.