Transition to Electromobility Slows Down
| Press release
Labor demand in the German automotive industry has fallen to a low. The number of job ads in October 2024 was 53 percent lower than in August 2023. In December 2023, companies focused on electromobility were offering almost twice as many vacancies as those focused on combustion engines. This difference has now dropped to 41 percentage points. This has been shown by analyses of the ifo Institute and the online job site Indeed of around 1.6 million job ads from almost 2,400 companies in the German automotive industry.
“The decrease in job ads illustrates the drastic slowdown of the transformation to electromobility in recent months,” says Oliver Falck, Director of the ifo Center for Industrial Organization and New Technologies. “In addition, the labor demand drop reflects the current crisis in the automotive industry. The only time the overall level of job ads was even lower than it is now was during the pandemic in mid-2020.”
“The automotive industry is repositioning itself in view of the continued sales weakness and the resurfaced discussion about the combustion engine ban,” says Annina Hering, a labor market expert at Indeed. Companies specializing in electromobility have reduced their demand for new hires in the fields of IT, software and development to a lesser extent than companies focusing on combustion engines. At the latter, however, the decline is lower for job ads in production and logistics. Moritz Goldbeck, co-author of the study, says: “Companies specializing in combustion engines are currently focused on production and less on development and digitalization. However, these areas are crucial for the transformation.”
The study examines over 1.6 million online job ads provided by Indeed from January 2018 to April 2024, which corresponds to the labor demand of 2,382 companies in the automotive sector in Germany. The companies are differentiated according to their patent portfolios in drive technology.
Questions can be directed to: Prof. Oliver Falck, 0049 / 89 / 9224-1370; Falck@ifo.de