BASF Cuts 2,500 Jobs, Sells Apartments in Ludwigshafen

The clearest story of the day is the deepening retreat of German industry from its company-town base. At BASF's Ludwigshafen headquarters — a city of about 175,000 dominated by the chemical group's Rhine-side plants — the world's largest chemical company has cut roughly 2,500 jobs since 2022 and is now selling off thousands of company-owned apartments occupied by current and former workers. "The mood is obviously not good," works council chair Sinischa Horvat told AFP. "The entire market is currently so weak. When you watch the news, you hardly hear any positive messages." Patrick Thiel, a 29-year-old BASF employee who recently stood as a Die Linke local candidate, told AFP the apartment sale "sends a signal … BASF is scaling back its operations," with "growing concern that this won't stop at the apartments but will also affect the main plant." BASF has committed to no compulsory redundancies in Ludwigshafen — where it still employs over 30,000 staff, around a third of its global workforce — until at least 2028.

The Ludwigshafen retrenchment runs in parallel with capital flowing out of Germany. Last month BASF inaugurated a €8.7 billion ($10 billion) complex in China, its biggest single investment project ever; the group describes its expansion in the world's largest chemical market as crucial. The contrast is the broader German pattern. According to consultancy EY, industrial companies in Germany cut 124,000 jobs in 2025 — roughly double the 2024 figure — with the heaviest losses in the auto sector. Manufacturing's share of the German economy fell to 19.5% in 2025, official figures show, its lowest level in many years. "The loss of industrial jobs in Germany has accelerated in the past two years. Companies that used to be the pride of Germany are suffering," DIW president Marcel Fratzscher told AFP, warning that depressed industrial regions tend to feed support for the Alternative for Germany. Fratzscher pushed back against "trying to cement the status quo," arguing the shift should be treated "as an opportunity to move into sectors that have better margins, better jobs."

A second line of pressure on the new Merz government opened over the building-energy law. A legal opinion commissioned by the CDU-affiliated Klimaunion concludes that the Heizungsgesetz draft tabled by Economy Minister Katherina Reiche (CDU) and Construction Minister Verena Hubertz (SPD), and approved by cabinet for parliamentary debate, is likely unconstitutional. The opinion centres on the proportionality of the obligations the draft places on building owners and on equal-treatment objections raised in the original 2023 fight that the new law was meant to fix. The challenge is awkward for the Merz coalition because Klimaunion sits inside the CDU's own climate-policy wing, complicating the framing that the new draft is a clean improvement on the Habeck-era law.

UNICEF's latest child-well-being study placed Germany 25th out of 37 EU and OECD countries, and the agency's German arm called the result "alarming." Sixty percent of 15-year-olds achieve minimum proficiency in reading and mathematics — rank 34th out of 41 — and UNICEF warned of "squandered future opportunities" without targeted intervention in education, mental-health support and child-poverty reduction. The picture lands inside an ongoing budget debate in the Bundestag in which the government has pledged €11.5 billion in 2026 support for Ukraine and is framing competitiveness, security and democratic solidarity as the chancellor's three budget pillars; UNICEF's numbers add a clear domestic-investment counterpoint to the security spending case.