More Volkswagen job cuts loom: will it be enough?

They say that there are only two certainties in life: death and taxes. But the auto industry can surely add a third, that it is only a matter of time before Volkswagen announces it is planning several thousand more job cuts. In November 2016, when the group employed 600,000 worldwide, it announced plans to cut 30,000 jobs (5% of total employment), 23,000 of them in Germany. Those cuts were scheduled to take five years to be complete. In 2021, another 5,000 job cuts were announced, taking until 2023 to be complete. Now, as 2023 comes to an end, more reports have emerged on further job cuts, although numbers have not been released, yet. Despite the above cuts (and there have been many other examples of cuts in the intervening period), total employment at the end of 2022 was officially just under 676,000. During 2022, the now departed Chief Executive Herbert Diess claimed that the group had at least 30,000 excess staff among its then 290,000 employees in Germany alone.