BMW to cut 1,800 jobs in China as sales fall nearly 22%
BMW’s extensive cost-cutting programme has reached China, where the carmaker plans to reduce the workforce at its BMW Brilliance Automotive joint venture by around 1,800 people. That represents roughly a tenth of the company’s staff. Behind the redundancies is a sharp shift in China’s luxury car market: local manufacturers are taking market share from European premium brands, while BMW’s sales have fallen 21.8% over nine months.
Production workers face the biggest cuts
According to Chinese publication AI4Robo, the redundancies began on 2 November and affect both production-line workers and administrative staff. The largest cuts are at the manufacturing complex in Shenyang, BMW’s largest worldwide.
The company is offering employees severance pay on an N+5 basis. This means one month’s pre-tax pay for each year of service, plus five months’ basic salary.
The redundancies affect both employees with a few years of service and specialists who have worked at the company for more than a decade. BMW has not officially confirmed the precise scale of the job cuts in China or the severance terms.
Chinese buyers turn away from BMW
BMW and MINI delivered around 376,000 cars in China in the first nine months of 2026, down 21.8% from a year earlier. Global deliveries fell 4.9% over the same period to approximately 1.71 million vehicles.
Meanwhile, sales grew by 4.5% in Europe and 3.4% in the US. This shows how much of BMW’s difficulties stem specifically from the Chinese market.
China’s share of BMW’s global sales fell from 32.3% in 2023 to 25.4% in 2025.
Local electric car manufacturers are offering increasingly competitive technology and generous equipment levels, often at substantially lower prices. BMW’s traditional advantages — a strong brand and German engineering — no longer guarantee its former sales success.
Thousands of jobs also set to go in Germany
BMW is preparing to cut around 8,000 positions in Germany, focusing mainly on management, development and support functions.
The company’s profitability has deteriorated sharply. In the first half of 2026, pre-tax profit fell 29.4%, while the automotive division’s operating profit margin dropped to 3.6%.
In early November, BMW cut its full-year forecast again. The company now expects the automotive division’s full-year operating profit margin to be between -0.5% and 0.5%, mainly because of restructuring costs and weak demand.
Neue Klasse tasked with turning things around
BMW is pinning its hopes in China on its new Neue Klasse generation of electric cars. Production of sixth-generation high-voltage batteries began at the Shenyang plant in October, following an investment of around €1.3 billion by the company.
The new-generation iX3 and i3 are intended to help BMW compete with local electric car manufacturers on range, charging speed and software.
For European buyers, the job cuts in China mean no immediate changes to the model range. However, BMW’s global cost-cutting will affect the development of future models and its production strategy.
BMW’s problem is no longer merely a temporary sales decline. Chinese buyers have shown that they are no longer willing to pay the same premium for European luxury brands when local competitors offer equivalent or better technology. The success of Neue Klasse will determine whether BMW can reverse this trend.
