China’s biggest solar firms fired nearly one-third of their workforces last year, a Reuters analysis of company filings shows, as one of the industries hand-picked by Beijing to drive economic growth grapples with falling prices and steep losses. Longi Green Energy, Trina Solar, Jinko Solar, JA Solar, and Tongwei collectively shed some 87,000 staff, or 31% of their workforces on average last year, according to a Reuters review of employment figures in public filings.
The job cuts illustrate the pain from the vicious price wars being fought across Chinese industries, including solar and electric vehicles, as China grapples with massive overcapacity and dismal demand (which has prompted China to dump its exports into any country that will accept them). As a frame of reference, the world produces twice as many solar panels each year as it uses, with most of them manufactured in China.
Analysts say the previously unreported job losses are likely a mix of layoffs and attrition due to cuts to pay and hours as companies sought to stem losses. More importantly, nobody is allowed to mention them: layoffs are politically sensitive in China, where Beijing views employment as key to social stability.
Remarkably, other than a 5% cut acknowledged by Longi last year, none of the firms mentioned above have announced any job cuts or responded to questions from Reuters. Meanwhile, amid tens of millions of wholesale layoffs which are not logged in any official statistics, China continues to pretend that its unemployment rate is 5%, and hasn’t budged in 5 years.
