China’s top solar companies, including Longi and Jinko Solar, cut nearly one-third of their workforce last year due to falling prices and industry losses, reports Reuters. Overcapacity and price wars, worsened by US tariffs, led to $60 billion in losses in 2023. The Chinese government plans to reduce excess capacity, but local resistance complicates efforts. They write:
China’s biggest solar firms shed nearly one-third of their workforces last year, company filings show, as one of the industries hand-picked by Beijing to drive economic growth grapples with falling prices and steep losses.The job cuts illustrate the pain from the vicious price wars being fought across Chinese industries, including solar and electric vehicles, as they grapple with overcapacity and tepid demand. The world produces twice as many solar panels each year as it uses, with most of them manufactured in China. […]
Layoffs are politically sensitive in China, where Beijing views employment as key to social stability. […]
“There’s a lot of overcapacity in China, like steel, like cement, but you don’t see any industry in the past having industry-wide cash loss for one and a half years already,” Lau said.
Company-level losses are on the same scale as in real estate, another crisis-hit sector, even though solar is only about one-tenth the size, he said.
“This is highly unusual and highly abnormal.”
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