Porsche Supervisory Board Backs Further Cost-Cutting Package – Up to 5,000 Jobs at Stake

Negotiations on the Future Package

According to dpa information, works meetings are scheduled for Monday. According to reports, several thousand positions are up for discussion – primarily in administration and development. Manager Magazin had previously reported that up to 5,000 additional positions could be cut through the second cost-cutting package.

Porsche speaks of a "Zukunftsplan". The negotiations between the management headed by CEO Michael Leiters and the employee representatives have been ongoing for months. As early as March, Leiters had announced that he wanted to significantly slim down Porsche and intensify the programs launched to this end. This would also include job cuts, he said at the time.

Ongoing Cost-Cutting Measures

It is not the first cost-cutting package that the VW subsidiary has had to launch: A year and a half ago, Porsche had already announced that around 1,900 positions would be cut in a socially responsible manner in the Stuttgart region by 2029. In addition, the contracts of around 2,000 fixed-term employees have expired. Jobs were also cut at the Leipzig plant, and three subsidiaries with a combined workforce of around 500 employees are also to be closed.

The background to these adjustments is a significantly lower production volume. In the first half of 2026, Porsche delivered 122,306 vehicles, 16 percent fewer than in the same period of the previous year. If the weak sales in China continue, Porsche will remain below the 30,000 delivery mark this year in the world's largest car market. Porsche managers are said to already refer to this internally as "Liebhabervolumen".

Declining Deliveries and the "Liebhabervolumen"

All plants and departments that are geared to a capacity of up to 400,000 cars are now to orient themselves toward a volume in the direction of 200,000, reports the Handelsblatt. At the Annual General Meeting in June, an operating return of between ten and 15 percent was set as the target. The norm in the industry is 25 to 55 percent.

In return, the employment security guarantee, which previously ruled out redundancies for operational reasons until mid-2030, could be extended. For the German sites, the employment security guarantee is to be extended until the end of 2035. This would mean that Porsche would refrain from operational redundancies for significantly longer than before.

The financial cutbacks for the workforce are already noticeable: For the 2025 financial year, Porsche employees did not receive a special payment for the first time. In 2023, there was still a bonus of up to 9,690 euros. However, the Christmas bonus was still voluntarily topped up to up to 100 percent of a month's salary.

Employment Security and Financial Losses

Strategy and new team must be in place by October: At the Capital Markets Day on 7 October, Porsche CEO Leiters must present his "Strategie 2035". With this, the sports car manufacturer aims to point the way out of the crisis and position the group for the long term.

The concerns of investors are reflected on the stock market. Since the IPO in 2022, the Stuttgart sports car maker's share has already lost around 45 percent of its value. Investors are reportedly betting on further falling prices. On 14 July 2026, however, RBC Capital Markets rated the VW preferred share as "Outperform" – a signal that there are also contrary assessments regarding the parent group.

Share Price Losses and Market Sentiment

The negotiations on the future package are considered one of the biggest cutbacks in the recent corporate history of the sports car maker. Industry observers interpret the supervisory board's newly announced backing as a signal that the workforce must expect concrete announcements in the coming weeks.

Uncertainty is therefore growing among employees. According to union circles, the works meetings scheduled for Monday are also intended to inform the workforce about the status of the negotiations and possible consequences for individual sites.

Porsche is a subsidiary of the Volkswagen Group and is thus indirectly also dependent on the decisions of the parent group. The return targets that Porsche has set itself, at ten to 15 percent, are significantly below the industry level of 25 to 55 percent – an indication of how strained the manufacturer's economic situation is currently assessed to be.

For the coming weeks, the "Strategie 2035" is considered the central document against which the further development of the company will be measured. If Porsche fails to stabilize production volumes and sustainably reduce costs, the pressure on further job-cutting plans is likely to increase.