The decrease of higher-income jobs in the German industry will accelerate in 2024, even beyond the more than the 55,000 already announced by large companies, because jobs in the large companies’ suppliers, particularly in the automotive sector in the mittelstand sector, face a “death of a thousand cuts,” a term recently used by ING chief economist Carsten Brzeski.
A survey of 50 suppliers to the industry conducted by management consultants Horvath revealed that 60 percent of companies want to reduce their German workforce over the next five years. And large companies think about producing abroad and cutting well-paying qualified jobs at their German sites. These jobs will be gone forever. As Focus magazine quotes Holger Schäfer from the Institut der deutschen Wirtschaft in Cologne: “If a chemical plant closes down in Germany, it won’t come back.”
