Volkswagen's chief executive is aiming to cut up to 100,000 jobs from the group's global workforce over the next few years, according to a report by German business magazine Manager Magazin, a figure that would mark a significant escalation of the carmaker's already sweeping restructuring. Volkswagen declined to comment on the report.
According to the report, carried by Reuters on Friday, CEO Oliver Blume is targeting reductions of as many as 100,000 positions worldwide as the company works to rebuild profitability. The magazine also said Blume intends to lower planned investment by around 15%, to just over €130 billion (roughly $148 billion) over the next five years, as the group reins in spending across its sprawling operations. Volkswagen has not confirmed the figures, and the report describes a target stretching over several years rather than an immediate announcement.
The reported scale goes well beyond the cuts the company has already disclosed. At its annual meeting earlier in the month, Volkswagen reiterated a plan to eliminate around 50,000 jobs in Germany by 2030, spread across the core Volkswagen brand, Audi, Porsche and its software unit Cariad, including roughly 19,000 reductions by the end of this year. Those domestic cuts, agreed with the powerful IG Metall union in late 2024, are being pursued largely through natural attrition, early retirement and voluntary departures rather than compulsory redundancies, and the company has said signed departure agreements already cover tens of thousands of employees through the end of the decade. A worldwide target approaching 100,000 would extend the retrenchment far beyond Germany.
The pressure behind the cuts is rooted in a steep deterioration in earnings. Volkswagen's operating profit fell sharply in 2025, with its margin compressing to one of its weakest levels in years, as the group contended with a costly transition to electric vehicles, intensifying competition in China, and weaker demand. Management has also pointed to US import tariffs as a material drag, estimating a hit running into the billions of euros annually, particularly on exports from Europe and vehicles produced in Mexico. For 2026, the company has guided to a core operating margin of roughly 4% to 4.5%, a level executives have described as insufficient for the long term against an ambition of 8% to 10% by 2030.
To bring costs into line, Volkswagen has been shrinking its manufacturing footprint and reducing capacity, while shifting some production between sites. It has said it cut factory costs at its German plants by more than 20% in 2025, delivering around €1 billion of savings, but executives have signalled that further measures are needed given the scale of the financial gap. The restructuring has already tested the limits of the company's labour agreements, with the future of some plants and their workforces still unresolved.
The reported deepening of the cuts underscores the broader strain on Germany's auto industry, which is grappling with high energy costs, heavy regulatory burdens, the expensive pivot to electric vehicles and aggressive competition from lower-cost Chinese rivals. For Volkswagen, Europe's largest carmaker and the owner of a stable of brands, the challenge is to restore margins without triggering a confrontation with unions that have so far been managed through negotiated, voluntary reductions. Until the company confirms any new targets, the worldwide figure remains a report rather than an official plan, but it points to the depth of the cost problem the group is racing to address.