The change in the car industry will cost jobs, in which managers, politicians and scientists are largely in agreement. However, the forecasts of how high the losses are actually differ widely. According to a new model calculation by Pforzheim's economics professor Rudi Kurz on behalf of BUND, 360,000 jobs in the German flagship industry are set to be lost in the next ten years.
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According to SPIEGEL information, the scenario is considerably more pessimistic than the prognosis of the Fraunhofer Institute IAO, which assumes a shrinkage of up to 125,000 jobs by 2030. Between 2020 and 2030, Kurz estimates, 150,000 of the current total of approximately 800,000 jobs would disappear by productivity alone. (Read a detailed analysis of the state of the German car industry here in the SPIEGEL cover story from last week.)
Another 160,000 jobs would be obsolete because electric cars consisted of fewer parts than vehicles with internal combustion engines - and thus fewer employees needed to assemble them. According to the model calculation, 50,000 jobs should also be eliminated through public transport and new mobility services. Therefore, Kurz demands that politics "create conditions for long-term jobs outside the mobility sector".
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The economics professor does not argue for halting technological change. He demands that science and politics better adapt to it. First of all, one has to specifically determine in which areas of the future new jobs could be developed.
However, the automotive industry does not want to write off the economics professor yet. As far as new jobs are concerned, he sees potential in the mobility sector as well as in the established automotive companies - "as long as they successfully turn into mobility service providers."
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