Berlin, July 15th, 2026 (The Berlin Spectator) – Germany’s automotive industry, in the throes of a massive restructuring wave, is now visibly shrinking in the labor market as well. According to an analysis cited by the “Welt” daily, job openings at Volkswagen, Audi, and BMW have dropped to some of their lowest levels in years, underscoring just how serious the sector’s cost problem has become. One striking exception stands out: Tesla.
The pressure across the industry has been mounting for months. VW CEO Oliver Blume has threatened to cut another 50,000 jobs worldwide, Mercedes-Benz chief Ola Källenius is pushing to scrap the 35-hour work week, newly appointed BMW boss Milan Nedeljković announced an austerity package as one of his first official acts, and Opel is eliminating 650 engineering positions in Rüsselsheim. Union IG Metall, meanwhile, is under heavier pressure than it has faced in years to accept significant concessions aimed at lowering costs at German plants, largely in hopes of softening the scale of the coming layoffs. Weak demand, fresh competition from China, and overcapacity are all weighing on automakers’ balance sheets, compounded by their own recent investments in new plants in Eastern Europe.
That strain is now showing up directly in hiring data. Job openings in the German auto sector, according to figures the staffing firm Index compiled for “Welt,” remained under 50,000 in the first half of the year. That marks a sharp contrast to the first half of 2023, when openings peaked above 82,000. The only time openings have been lower in recent years was during the pandemic period of 2020 and 2021.
Genuine Job Engine
Tesla is the clear outlier. Its plant in Grünheide, Brandenburg, is currently a genuine job engine, a fact that stings for IG Metall since Tesla is the only major manufacturer in Germany without a collective bargaining agreement with the union. The union has gone further, accusing Tesla’s management of actively working to marginalize IG Metall’s influence, including during works council elections.
Much of the restraint elsewhere in the industry is concentrated at the management level, where fewer executive and department head positions are being advertised. Entry-level opportunities are also drying up: Openings for apprenticeships fell 15 percent, and positions for young professionals dropped five percent. Internships, however, which come with no long-term commitment from employers, rose 18 percent.
The numbers at individual companies illustrate the freeze. Audi’s public job board currently lists just 101 openings, only five of which are genuine positions outside of internships, thesis work, or apprenticeships. Volkswagen AG’s job portal shows a similarly thin 73 openings, while BMW lists only 48, most of them for AI specialists or dealership roles.
Built From Scratch
Tesla, by comparison, currently advertises 765 open positions in Germany, including numerous new hires for its HR department to manage planned workforce growth. The listings span a wide range of roles, from senior engineers to assembly line workers, from facility maintenance staff to photographers for its design studio. Even Tesla’s rapid-response engineering unit, known internally as “25 Guns,” which reports directly to CEO Elon Musk and is deployed to tackle urgent problems, is currently hiring.
The Grünheide plant, which opened in 2022, is the newest automotive factory built entirely from scratch in Germany, and Tesla intends to keep expanding it. The company had announced plans to fill 1,000 new positions in the first half of the year, with another 1,500 expected as battery production ramps up. In total, Tesla aims to grow its workforce by 3,500 employees, including 500 temporary workers who will be brought on permanently. That marks a turnaround from a year ago, when, according to the news agency dpa, a sales slump following Musk’s outspoken political stances had temporarily cost the plant as many as 1,700 jobs. Grünheide currently employs around 12,500 people.
The growth tracks with Tesla’s surging registration numbers in Germany, which climbed 225 percent year-over-year in the first half of 2026. With nearly 29,000 vehicles registered, Tesla came close to matching BMW’s numbers, despite offering essentially just two electric models, the Model Y and Model 3, compared to BMW’s much broader lineup across multiple drivetrain types. Tesla has also been able to cut its entry-level prices significantly, a sign that the company has its production costs under control.
Lower Labor Costs
VW’s Blume, for his part, complained in an interview published Monday on the company’s internal intranet that Volkswagen’s overhead costs run 20 percent above those of its competitors. He warned that German plants are now so expensive to operate that they risk losing out to sister factories elsewhere in the group when new orders are allocated starting in the 2030s. The goal, he said, is unambiguous: fewer jobs and lower labor costs.
Tesla’s cost advantage in Grünheide is partly structural. The plant runs a 38-hour work week, three hours longer than at other German auto plants, a difference that alone amounts to a 7.9 percent cost advantage. It also operates under its own labor agreement, negotiated without the dominant influence of IG Metall, likely pushing costs down further. Grünheide’s proximity to Poland adds another edge, since hourly labor costs there run 58 percent below German levels, making German wages an attractive draw for workers living across the border.
Mercedes-Benz underscored the same East-West wage gap at the start of the week when it opened an expanded plant in Kecskemét, Hungary, where the automaker’s electric C-Class is now built with a workforce of 5,000. The Stuttgart-based company said production costs in Hungary run 70 percent lower than in Germany. While the Hungarian plant’s annual capacity is now set to reach 200,000 vehicles, Mercedes plans to cut German production capacity by 100,000 units per year. BMW, too, opened a new production line for its iX3 model in Hungary a year ago, similarly benefiting from lower labor costs in a country with well-developed automotive supply infrastructure.
The regional divide is visible in Germany’s own job statistics. While job numbers remain stagnant in the country’s traditional auto manufacturing heartland in the south, Brandenburg and Berlin, home to Tesla’s plant, are seeing new positions emerge. In absolute terms, though, southern Germany’s dense network of mid-sized auto suppliers still accounts for by far the largest share of the industry’s jobs.
