China’s solar giants quietly shed a third of their workforces last year

By Colleen Howe

BEIJING, August 1 (Reuters) -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.

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.

Analysts say the previously unreported job losses were likely a mix of layoffs and attrition due to cuts to pay and hours as companies sought to stem losses.

Layoffs are politically sensitive in China, where Beijing views employment as key to social stability. 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.

“The industry has been facing a downturn since the end of 2023,” said Cheng Wang, an analyst at Morningstar. “In 2024, it actually got worse. In 2025, it looks like it’s getting even worse.”

Since 2024, more than 40 solar firms have delisted, gone bankrupt or been acquired, according to a presentation by the photovoltaic industry association in July.

China’s solar manufacturers built new factories at a fever pitch between 2020 and 2023 as the state redirected resources from the sinking property sector to what it used to call the “new three” growth industries: solar panels, electric cars and batteries.

That building spree led to falling prices and a brutal price war made worse by U.S. tariffs thrown up against exports from the many Chinese-owned factories in Southeast Asia. The industry lost $60 billion last year.

MORE TO COME

While analysts say it is unclear whether job cuts continued this year, Beijing is increasingly signalling it intends to intervene to cut capacity, sending polysilicon prices soaring nearly 70% in July while solar panel prices have increased more modestly.

Major polysilicon producer GCL told Reuters on Thursday that top producers plan to set up an OPEC-like entity to control prices and supply. The group is also setting up a 50-billion yuan vehicle to buy and shut around a third of the industry’s lower-quality production capacity.