Schaeffler named a second cut on November 3. The release, titled a “further performance improvement program,” puts the reduction at a net 3,460 positions in Europe, about 2,660 of them in Germany, across 16 locations. Five sites close, four in Germany and one in Belgium. The company expects about EUR 300M a year in savings by 2030 and about EUR 480M in one-off costs, most of it booked as restructuring provisions in 2026.
As we covered on October 12, Schaeffler had just said its 2024 program of 4,700 jobs was 79% done and a year ahead of schedule. That piece ended by asking whether the next program would name automation as a lever. It did not. Neither the release nor the Reuters report mentions AI, and we are not adding it. This is a cut about engines.
What the release says
The 3,460 splits roughly half production, 30% research and development, and 20% other functions. By our arithmetic that is about 1,730 production roles, 1,040 in R&D and 690 elsewhere. The German share is about 9% of the core workforce by 2028, which the release puts at 31,957 on September 30. Counting earlier programs and the 1,800 partial-retirement agreements signed in early October, it rises to about 18%.
Dortmund (430 employees) and Morbach (160) are named closures, both in the Powertrain & Chassis division and both making combustion-engine products. The other German closures are Berlin and Schwalbach, and the Belgian one is Herstal. The release lists capacity changes at Herzogenaurach, Bühl, Nürnberg and Regensburg, a toolmaking stop at Höchstadt, and adjustments in France and Slovakia. Site detail goes to local staff meetings, and the measures run through works councils under the 2018 Future Accord. The structural steps fall mainly in 2027 and 2028.
CEO Klaus Rosenfeld’s stated reasons, per Reuters, are weaker combustion-engine demand, slower EV adoption and competition. Q3 revenue was EUR 5.81bn against EUR 5.83bn a year earlier, and EBIT before special items fell to EUR 245M from EUR 264M. Full-year guidance was confirmed.
The unit math
EUR 480M of one-off cost for EUR 300M of annual savings means about 1.6 years of run-rate savings to pay back the bill (our arithmetic). Spread over 3,460 positions it is about EUR 139K a position, though the one-off figure covers more than severance.
Against the program that just finished, the new one is smaller in people and larger in savings. The 2024 plan was 4,700 gross positions with a savings target above EUR 290M. This one is 3,460 net positions, 26% fewer, for about EUR 300M. The bases differ, gross against net, so treat the comparison as a rough one. Add the two and Schaeffler is working through roughly 8,160 positions between November 2024 and 2028.
The release also describes a temporary, voluntary pay reduction, starting with the board and reaching every level. Details are still to be worked out. Schaeffler says it lowers cost per employee and so shrinks the number of cuts and the one-off bill. No percentage, amount or duration is given.
Where it sits among German industrial cuts
Bosch cut 900 of 1,800 jobs at its Nuremberg pump plant in September. Volkswagen’s 50,000-job plan set the scale for the sector, and Porsche’s 9,000 is 25% of its workforce. Schaeffler’s 3,460 is smaller than all of those except Bosch’s single plant, but it is the one that arrives with a second program stacked on a first. Three weeks separate “done early” from “here is the next one.”
The humanoid line in the same release
COO Jochen Schröder says the group sees growth opportunities in humanoid robotics and defense. The release gives no figure for either, and says at least part of the cuts will be offset by new positions in growth areas, again without a number.
We have the numbers elsewhere. In May Schaeffler targeted a three-digit-million-euro humanoid order book by 2030 with 30 prototype orders. A week later it agreed to take 1,000 to 2,000 wheeled humanoids from Humanoid for its own plants through 2032, with a first phase from December 2026 to June 2027 at Herzogenaurach and Schweinfurt. Today’s release lists Herzogenaurach among the sites with capacity changes and Schweinfurt among those where special-machinery manufacturing is adjusted. The company does not link the two, and we do not either.
The cohort point is scale. The humanoid order book Schaeffler is aiming for is the same order of magnitude as the EUR 480M it is spending to shrink the combustion business. The new line is real and still a fraction of what the old one employed.
What it means for careers
The exposed work is combustion-engine production and the engineers who design for it. A 30% R&D share means roughly 1,000 engineering positions in Europe, in a division whose product is being phased out by the market, not by software. Machinists and assemblers at engine-component sites carry the other half.
The offsetting jobs are in actuators and defense. They are fewer, they need different skills (mechatronics, motion control, qualification for defense work), and Schaeffler has not said where they are or when they start. For someone at a Tier-1 powertrain site the timing is 2027 and 2028, the years the release names for the structural steps. Retraining toward actuators is the visible path, and the release does not promise it.
Watch for the site-level numbers from the local staff meetings, the first statement from IG Metall, and the size and form of the pay cut, which decides how many of the 3,460 are actually cut.
