Job cuts within the steel and electrical industries: Up to 150,000 jobs affected, warns Gesamtmetall | EUROtoday

The employers’ affiliation Gesamtmetall expects as much as 150,000 jobs to be misplaced within the steel and electrical industries this yr. “We are in the middle of deindustrialization and the prospects are very bleak. The situation is really dramatic,” Gesamtmetall managing director Oliver Zander advised the newspapers of the Funke media group. His business is “in the greatest crisis since the founding of the Federal Republic”.

Like many affiliation representatives, Zander cites excessive prices for firms in Germany as the explanations. “In Germany we have energy costs that are too high, corporate taxes that are too high, social security contributions that are too high and too much bureaucracy.”

There is a scarcity of a scientific strategy to lowering forms. “We are more systematic in combating animal diseases than in reducing bureaucracy,” mentioned Zander. “Of course we also have to reduce bureaucrats” – there are too many workers in public administrations, which additionally places a pressure on their budgets.

Poor order state of affairs regardless of particular results

Zander took inventory of the job losses within the business: “We have been in a recession for two years. We have already lost 270,000 jobs since 2018,” he advised the newspapers. “We fell below 3.8 million employees in our industry last month. We last had that in 2015.”

Several giant orders from the protection sector resulted in a major improve in orders within the steel and electrical business within the final quarter of 2025, Gesamtmetall introduced a month in the past. Adjusted for the principally state-financed protection contracts, the order state of affairs remains to be within the basement.