European companies hit hiring brakes over AI and slowing progress – DW – 01/12/2026 | EUROtoday

For a short while throughout and after COVID, Europe’s employees loved uncommon leverage over their employers. Generous furlough and decreased working-hour applications, like Germany’s Kurzarbeit, helped firms offset their staffing prices. Offices turned non-obligatory due to distant work.

Coming out of the pandemic, headlines concerning the so-called Great Resignation mirrored a world labor scarcity that sharply elevated demand for expertise. Workplace burnout gave rise to one other new phrase, Quiet Quitting, as workers rejected overdelivering in pursuit of a more healthy work-life stability.

Research by McKinsey consultancy in 2022 discovered {that a} third of European employees have been contemplating quitting their jobs inside three to 6 months, which Angelika Reich, management advisor on the govt recruitment agency Spencer Stuart, advised DW was a “striking figure for a region with a traditionally low [staff] turnover.”

Europe’s labor markets lose momentum

With the continent’s industrial sector now beneath strain, wage progress slowing and the specter of synthetic intelligence (AI) changing human work, that second has rapidly reversed.

Reich famous how Europe’s labor market has “cooled down” and the way “fewer job vacancies and a tougher economic climate naturally make employees more cautious about switching jobs.”

Despite remaining resilient, the 21-member eurozone’s labor market is projected to develop extra slowly this yr at 0.6% in comparison with 0.7% in 2025, based on the European Central Bank (ECB).

Although that drop appears tiny, every 0.1 proportion level distinction quantities to round 163,000 fewer new jobs being created. Just three years in the past, the eurozone created some 2.76 million new jobs whereas rising at a sturdy price of 1.7%.

Migration has additionally performed a significant position in shaping Europe’s labor provide, serving to to ease acute employee shortages and assist job progress in lots of nations. However, internet migration is now stabilizing or falling.

Germany’s woes set the tone

In Germany, multiple in three firms plans to chop jobs this yrbased on the Cologne-based IW financial suppose tank.

The Bank of France expects French unemployment to climb to 7.8%, whereas within the UK, two-thirds of economists questioned by The Times newspaper suppose unemployment may rise to as excessive as 5.5% from the present 5.1%.

Unemployment in Poland — the European Union’s rising financial powerhouse — is edging larger, reaching 5.6% in November in comparison with 5% a yr earlier. Romania and the Czech Republic are additionally seeing related upticks in joblessness.

The softening of the labor market has prompted new phrases, just like the Great Hesitation, the place firms suppose twice about hiring and employees are cautious about quitting irritating jobs, and Career Cushioning — quietly making ready a backup plan in case of layoffs.

Some European economies set to outperform

Across Europe, nonetheless, the general image stays removed from bleak. Spain, which is benefitting from a post-COVID tourism increase, is about for one more bumper yr of jobs progress, together with Luxembourg, Ireland, Croatia, Portugal and Greece, based on the European Centre for the Development of Vocational Trainingan official EU company. Even in nations experiencing weaker progress, pockets of sturdy employee demand stay.

“What felt like a widespread scarcity of workers during the Great Resignation has become more sector-specific,” Julian Stahl, labor market professional for the net recruiter XING, advised DW. “There are still serious shortages in retail, health care, logistics, engineering and other highly specialized roles.”

Germany’s industrial base has borne the brunt of the job losses in current months, notably within the automotive, equipment, metals and textiles sectors. High power prices, weak export demand and fierce competitors from China have erased greater than 120,000 positions, authorities information present.

Those similar pressures are hitting producers in France, Italy and Poland simply as laborious, pushing the eurozone’s Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) right down to 48.8 in December, its lowest studying in 9 months. Readings above 50.0 point out progress in exercise, whereas these under level to contraction.

“Most firms are aiming to hold the line or shrink slightly rather than grow,” mentioned Stahl, including that hiring hasn’t “stopped completely.”

Fresh graduates shun auto sector

Negative headlines about manufacturing job cuts seem like inflicting reputational harm amongst Europe’s most treasured industries, says Bettina Schaller Bossert, president of the World Employment Confederation, a world nonprofit representing the personal employment companies trade and primarily based in Brussels, Belgium.

“A lot of young graduates believe there is no future in the automotive sector. They’re not interested in pursuing careers [with European carmakers] even though there are fantastic new opportunities,” Schaller Bossert advised DW.

Europe has rolled out AI much more slowly than the United States and China, held again by decrease funding, stricter regulation and lagging adoption. But that hasn’t eased worker anxiousness that automation will rapidly exchange people at work, particularly after adverse predictions of tens of millions of job losses forward.

A examine by consulting large EY revealed in July discovered {that a} quarter of Europe’s employees concern AI may put their very own jobs in danger, whereas 74% imagine companies will want a smaller headcount on account of the know-how.

AI ‘jolt’ set to reshape work

In November, the Nuremberg-based Institute for Employment Research (IAB) projected that 1.6 million jobs in Germany alone could possibly be reshaped by or misplaced to AI by 2040. The company of the German labor workplace foresees that high-skilled positions might be disproportionately hit, though the tech sector may create round 110,000 new jobs.

Enzo Webe, head of the IAB’s forecasting division, mentioned within the rport AI would result in a “transformation” of the labor market, however “not less work.”

Other predictions vary from the emergence of a so-called AI precariat —  total populations that aren’t simply jobless or underemployed, however have misplaced their goal, id and social belonging — to extra optimistic views that argue AI will redistribute work, not remove entire professions.

“A lot of drudge tasks can be pushed to AI to free up human labor,” John Springford, a labor market professional on the Centre for European Reform, advised DW. “But there’s a good reason to believe that professional, knowledge work won’t shrink.”

Anthony Klotz, the University College London professor who coined the time period the Great Resignation, argues in his upcoming guide “Jolted” that quitting jobs is much less about long-term dissatisfaction and extra about sudden moments of readability.

For many European employees, the speedy advance of AI may develop into precisely that sort of jolt, a catalyst that prompts them to maneuver preemptively, earlier than automation reshapes their roles for them.

Edited by: Uwe Hessler