The German Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA) highlights how profound the changes will be with a recent study on the employment situation, published on October 28, 2024 in Die Zeit. The key insight: the transformation could cost the industry around 140,000 jobs over the next ten years. Since 2019, the automotive industry has already lost 75,000 employees, while only 29,000 new positions were created during that period. This is a considerable figure given a total of 780,000 employees in Germany, 120,000 of them at VW. The main reason for the job cuts is that the shift toward e-mobility requires fewer employees than before.
Yet while jobs are being lost on one hand, the shortage of skilled workers is simultaneously slowing the transformation: the industry depends on well-trained IT specialists and electronics engineers, who are however hard to find. The study notes that some occupations – such as mechatronics or technical production planning – could become difficult to fill in the future. software4production GmbH aims to close this gap through innovative software solutions and knowledge transfer in PPS.
