According to media reports, Mercedes-Benz’s layoff plan has made substantial progress, and about 4,000 employees have accepted severance packages and resigned.The severance compensation adopts a gradient design, which is directly linked to rank and length of service. An "acceleration bonus" is also set up to encourage employees to make early decisions, with a maximum compensation of 500,000 euros (equivalent to approximately RMB 4.15 million) being provided to senior managers.
As early as March this year, news broke that Mercedes management would send a letter to all employees in April to encourage employees to voluntarily leave. The severance package is mainly for employees in the engineering, administrative, and IT fields. The severance package was launched in April, and interested employees can apply until March 2026.
At that time, regarding this plan, Mercedes-Benz CEO Ola Källenius expressed the hope that this generous severance package would encourage about 30,000 employees to voluntarily resign. Officials hope to save about 5 billion euros a year by 2027 through outsourcing decisions, not filling vacant positions and severance pay.
Behind Mercedes-Benz's drastic layoffs is the decline in Mercedes-Benz's performance. In recent years, with the rapid development of electrification, Mercedes-Benz's market share has also been severely reduced, and both revenue and profits have declined.
Relevant data shows that Mercedes-Benz's operating income last year was 145.594 billion euros, a year-on-year decrease of 4.5%; gross profit was 28.576 billion euros, the decline expanded to 19.5%; after-tax net profit plummeted 28.4% to 10.409 billion euros.
Entering 2025, Mercedes-Benz's performance decline has further intensified. In the third quarter, global sales were only 525,300 vehicles, a year-on-year decrease of 12%. Among them, the performance of two key markets was particularly eye-catching. The US market sold 80,000 vehicles, a year-on-year decrease of 17%; China, the world's largest single market, sold 125,100 vehicles, a year-on-year decrease of 27%.
In the context of declining sales, layoffs have become one of Mercedes-Benz's important measures to improve efficiency, which can most directly reduce costs. At the same time, according to the official plan, the largest new product release in history will be launched at this year's Munich Auto Show, covering a variety of new cars such as pure electric GLC and electric C-class, in order to accelerate the transformation to electrification.