Employees

Including the Chinese joint ventures, the Volkswagen Group employed an average of 634,396 people (excluding trainees) in fiscal year 2017, an increase of 2.4% year-on-year. Our companies in Germany employed 284,734 people on average in 2017; at 44.9 (45.2)%, their share of the headcount was slightly below the level of the previous year.

The Volkswagen Group had 615,081 active employees (+2.3%) as of December 31, 2017. In addition, 8,004 employees were in the passive phase of their partial retirement and 19,207 young people were in vocational traineeships. The Volkswagen Group’s headcount was 642,292 employees (+2.5%) at the end of the reporting period. The production-related expansion, the recruitment of specialists within and outside Germany and the expansion of the workforce in the new plants in Mexico, China and Poland were offset by the reduction of around 9,800 employees as a result of the disposal of part of the PGA Group SAS. A total of 287,480 people were employed in Germany (+2.1%), while 354,812 were employed abroad (+2.8%).

EMPLOYEES BY DIVISION/BUSINESS AREA
as of December 31, 2017