Car crisis takes toll on Germany’s young engineers

FRANKFURT – Despite a year of searching, previous stints at big automotive suppliers and sending out about 50 applications, German software engineer Max Peil is still looking for a job.

Trained in computer vision, a critical part of autonomous and intelligent driving systems, Peil could once have expected to sail into a role at one of Germany’s industrial giants.

But years of stagnant growth in Europe’s biggest economy and increasingly fierce Chinese competition are now taking their toll on young engineers like Peil.

“Usually, you just get rejected straight up,” the 30-year-old told AFP in the western city of Frankfurt.

“I’ve had one interview. It was the same with my friends – one has sent over 60 applications.”

Known the world over for cutting-edge technology and innovative design, Germany’s car industry, powered by exports, has so far managed to avoid the drastic decline seen in countries like Britain, France and Italy.

But Chinese carmakers like BYD and Xpeng have eaten into German carmakers’ sales in the world’s largest auto market, leading to painful adjustments at home.

“Ten years ago we made about six million vehicles a year and we’ve now stabilised at about four, 4.2 million,” transport economist Thomas Puls of the IW economic institute in Cologne told AFP.

“That’s good compared with other European countries, but we now need to accept that the golden age is not coming back.”

In a sign of the times, workers on July 9 protested at Volkswagen sites across the country over reports that Germany’s biggest carmaker is mulling over up to 100,000 job cuts.

Total employment in the German automotive sector fell 8 per cent in the five years to 2025, according to Federal Employment Agency (FEA) data, even as it grew a little over 1 per cent overall.

German industry as a whole is struggling against what some have dubbed the “China Shock 2.0” as the country’s firms shift away from low-value production and into making more high-tech goods, often at lower prices.

This is pushing German companies out of once reliable export markets.

Total German exports were €1.56 trillion (S$2.3 trillion) in 2025, down almost 2 per cent from a 2022 peak, according to data from statistics office Destatis.

Exports to China meanwhile plunged almost a quarter to €81.3 billion over the same period.

For Peil, who in 2025 completed a traineeship at tyre maker and industrial supplier Continental before it spun off its automotive business, the crisis meant it was clear he would not be taken on.

“Even when I started you could see, and you’d always read about it in the news, that this or that part of the business was being restructured,” he said.

“And when you see experienced colleagues going, then you know it’s unlikely you’ll be hired for the role.”

‘What’s wrong?’

Anja Robert, who for 20 years has led the careers service at one of Germany’s leading engineering schools, told AFP that even some of the best students now had to search awhile.

“There’s people who come to us and say, ‘Wow, I’ve written 30 applications and heard hardly anything back: What’s wrong?’”, said Robert, head of careers at RWTH Aachen University.

“It’s not the case any more that you just get your application in with BMW and you get a job.”

Qualified engineers in 2025 had an unemployment rate of 3.8 per cent, according to the FEA data, an increase of almost 50 per cent compared with 2022.

Electrical engineer Luca Linhsen is one of the luckier ones – she took up a job as a software consultant in Hamburg in July.

But she still had to endure a “frustrating” months-long job hunt.

“As engineers we were led to understand when beginning our studies that you’ve practically got a job even before finishing the degree,” she told AFP.

“If you want to study engineering, do it because you have a passion for technology. Don’t do it for the money or the job security.” AFP