By Colleen Howe
BEIJING, August 1 (Reuters) -China’s largest photo voltaic companies shed practically one-third of their workforces final yr, firm filings present, as one of many industries hand-picked by Beijing to drive financial progress grapples with falling costs and steep losses.
The job cuts illustrate the ache from the vicious value wars being fought throughout Chinese language industries, together with photo voltaic and electrical automobiles, as they grapple with overcapacity and tepid demand. The world produces twice as many photo voltaic panels every year because it makes use of, with most of them manufactured in China.
Longi Inexperienced Vitality, Trina Photo voltaic, Jinko Photo voltaic, JA Photo voltaic, and Tongwei, collectively shed some 87,000 workers, or 31% of their workforces on common final yr, based on a Reuters evaluate of employment figures in public filings.
Analysts say the beforehand unreported job losses have been probably a mixture of layoffs and attrition as a consequence of cuts to pay and hours as corporations sought to stem losses.
Layoffs are politically delicate in China, the place Beijing views employment as key to social stability. Apart from a 5% minimize acknowledged by Longi final yr, not one of the companies talked about above have introduced any job cuts or responded to questions from Reuters.
“The {industry} has been dealing with a downturn for the reason that finish of 2023,” mentioned Cheng Wang, an analyst at Morningstar. “In 2024, it truly bought worse. In 2025, it appears to be like prefer it’s getting even worse.”
Since 2024, greater than 40 photo voltaic companies have delisted, gone bankrupt or been acquired, based on a presentation by the photovoltaic {industry} affiliation in July.
China’s photo voltaic producers constructed new factories at a fever pitch between 2020 and 2023 because the state redirected assets from the sinking property sector to what it used to name the “new three” progress industries: photo voltaic panels, electrical vehicles and batteries.
That constructing spree led to falling costs and a brutal value warfare made worse by U.S. tariffs thrown up in opposition to exports from the various Chinese language-owned factories in Southeast Asia. The {industry} misplaced $60 billion final yr.
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Whereas analysts say it’s unclear whether or not job cuts continued this yr, Beijing is more and more signalling it intends to intervene to chop capability, sending polysilicon costs hovering practically 70% in July whereas photo voltaic panel costs have elevated extra modestly.
Main polysilicon producer GCL instructed Reuters on Thursday that high producers plan to arrange an OPEC-like entity to manage costs and provide. The group can be organising a 50-billion yuan automobile to purchase and shut round a 3rd of the {industry}’s lower-quality manufacturing capability.
