Employees

Including the Chinese joint ventures, the Volkswagen Group employed an average of 655,722 people in fiscal year 2018, an increase of 3.4% year-on-year. In Germany, we employed 290,757 people on average in 2018; at 44.3 (44.9)%, their share of the total headcount was slightly below the level of the previous year.

The Volkswagen Group had 636,156 active employees (+3.4%) as of December 31, 2018. In addition, 9,096 employees were in the passive phase of their partial retirement and 19,244 young people were in vocational traineeships. The Volkswagen Group’s headcount was 664,496 employees (+3.5%) at the end of the reporting period. The main contributors to this were the volume-related expansion, the recruitment of specialists inside and outside Germany and the expansion of the workforce at our new plants in China. A total of 292,729 people were employed in Germany (+1.8%), while 371,767 were employed abroad (+4.8%).

EMPLOYEES BY DIVISION/BUSINESS AREA
as of December 31, 2018