The Era of Layoffs: Hyundai Motor Faces Workforce Reduction as AI Robots Replace Human Labor

The automotive industry, which has long been responsible for providing high-paying, stable, and quality jobs, is now gripped by a sense of employment crisis.

As the industry shifts toward the era of future mobility, the introduction of smart factories and AI-powered physical robots is drastically reducing the number of personnel required in production processes.

While global automakers are embarking on large-scale restructuring, including layoffs and factory closures, it is reported that Hyundai Motor is also set to reorganize its workforce structure through the natural attrition of employees reaching retirement age.

According to the Hyundai Motor labor union and other sources, a total of 9,525 production workers are scheduled to retire between this year and 2032.

This means that nearly 39% of the current 24,500 unionized production workers will leave the field within the next seven years.

By year, the number of retirees will exceed 1,000 annually until 2030, starting with 2,024 this year, followed by 1,706 in 2027 and 1,722 in 2028.

This "retirement rush" is occurring because the generation hired in large numbers during the late 1980s and early 1990s—to coincide with the expansion of the Ulsan plant and the completion of the Asan plant—is now reaching retirement age all at once.

However, unlike the manufacturing era of the past, the current shift toward production process automation, the introduction of physical AI robots, and the rise of electric vehicles are simplifying production lines. Consequently, it is understood that the company will not be hiring new production workers to replace all those who are leaving.

A trend is emerging where new recruitment is being adjusted to focus on essential job functions.

In fact, the scale of Hyundai Motor's open recruitment for production workers, which resumed in 2023, has been less than half of the number of annual retirees.

Other global automakers are already undergoing large-scale workforce restructuring. General Motors (GM) in the United States cut 11,000 jobs between 2022 and 2025 and announced an additional reduction of 3,000 in March of this year.

Germany's Volkswagen has reached an agreement with its labor union to cut more than 35,000 jobs at its domestic operations by 2030, and Japan's Nissan is pursuing a project to reduce its global workforce by 15%, or 20,000 employees.

Analysts suggest this is because the transition to electric and AI-driven autonomous vehicles requires higher investment costs, while the adoption of physical AI reduces the need for human production staff.

The number of domestic employees at Hyundai Motor, which had been steadily increasing to 75,137 in 2024, fell to 72,598 last year, marking the first decline in five years.

Reported by Kim Minjeong | Video by Hong Jinyoung | Graphics by Yang Hyemin | Produced by SBS Digital News
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.