Thousands of jobs to go at Jaguar Land Rover amid China sales slump

Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) is preparing to lay off more than a tenth of its UK workforce.

The automaker will today (January 10) confirm plans to slash as many as 5,000 jobs, according to the BBC, with management, marketing and administrative positions likely to be hardest hit.

The firm, which employs 40,000 people in the UK, is making the cuts as part of a £2.5bn plan to reduce costs.

Today’s announcement follows a raft of layoffs made last year, which included 1,000 agency roles at the company’s Solihull facility and 180 in Merseyside.

Further, at JLR’s site in Castle Bromwich, 1,000 employees were moved onto a three-day week for the last quarter of 2018.

But Jaguar’s overseas headcount has been increasing. It plans to hire 3,000 workers in Slovakia, where it is moving all production of its Land Rover Discovery model, and has hired 4,000 in China since 2014.

China was previously JLR’s biggest and most profitable market, but sales there have slipped almost 50% in recent months, with Chinese consumers holding back on big purchases due to ongoing trade tensions.

The downturn in China, paired with a decline in diesel sales in the wake of the Volkswagen emissions scandal, are believed to be the biggest factors behind the job cuts.

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