Jaguar Land Rover to axe up to 500 UK jobs

Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has announced it will cut up to 500 UK management jobs, as it deals with the fallout from US President Donald Trump’s recent tariffs.

The company paused shipment of its models from the UK to the United States in April following the President’s decision to hit all foreign car and light truck imports to the US with a 25% tariff. The United States accounted for a quarter of JLR’s 400,000 annual sales, and as of April, JLR was said to have a couple of months’ supply of cars left in the US. Shipments eventually resumed in May.

The tariff rate was later reduced to 10% after the US and UK agreed to a trade truce; however, the terms of the deal also capped the total annual car exports to the US at 100,000 models, meaning a higher rate would be applied to any vehicle surpassing that threshold.

A 15% decline in sales to just over 94,000 in the three months leading to June was revealed by JLR last week, which the company attributes to the pause in exports and the planned phasing out of older Jaguar models. Jaguar’s highly publicised electric relaunch will take place in 2026.

Now, it has been announced that a reduction in management roles, which amounted to 1.5% of its 33,000-strong UK workforce, will take place through a voluntary redundancy programme. JLR’s workforce in the UK is spread between sites in Solihull, Halewood and Wolverhampton.

The news comes just months after Prime Minister Sir Kier Starmer’s visit to the Jaguar Land Rover factory in Solihull, after which he pledged to protect JLR workers’ jobs amid the tariff fallout. Downing Street today said Jaguar’s plan to cut jobs in the UK was “disappointing”.

It is also symptomatic of a wider British issue, with the Office for National Statistics (ONS) today reporting a rise in the unemployment rate from 4.6% to 4.7% in the three months to May.

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words: Mike Booth
pictures: Jaguar Land Rover (JLR)