{"id":41070,"date":"2025-11-16T05:22:31","date_gmt":"2025-11-16T05:22:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/41070\/"},"modified":"2025-11-16T05:22:31","modified_gmt":"2025-11-16T05:22:31","slug":"ford-ceo-jim-farley-says-he-cant-fill-5000-mechanic-jobs-paying-120k-per-year-we-are-in-trouble-in-our-country","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/41070\/","title":{"rendered":"Ford CEO Jim Farley says he can\u2019t fill 5,000 mechanic jobs paying $120K per year: ‘We are in trouble in our country’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ford has been unable to fill some 5,000 openings for mechanics despite offering a salary of $120,000 a year \u2014 prompting the company\u2019s chief executive<\/a> to warn of a dire shortage of skilled tradespeople in the US.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are in trouble in our country. We are not talking about this enough,\u201d Ford CEO Jim Farley said on an episode of the \u201cOffice Hours: Business Edition\u201d podcast <\/a>published earlier this week.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have over a million openings in critical jobs, emergency services, trucking, factory workers, plumbers, electricians and tradesmen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ford has been unable to fill roughly 5,000 openings for mechanics despite offering a salary of $120,000 a year, CEO Jim Farley said. Getty Images<\/p>\n

Farley added: \u201cIt\u2019s a very serious thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

The $120,000 pay is nearly twice the average annual American salary, according to the Social Security Administration<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It takes about five years to learn the skills needed to pull a diesel engine out of a Ford Super Duty truck \u2014 and the country isn\u2019t training enough people to do it, Farley said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do not have trade schools,\u201d he fumed. <\/p>\n

Earlier this year, Ford rolled out a $4 million initiative to fund scholarship for auto technicians.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWe are not investing in educating a next generation of people like my grandfather who had nothing, who built a middle class life and a future for his family,\u201d Farley said.<\/p>\n

His granddad was employee 389 at Ford and worked on the company\u2019s flagship Model T.<\/p>\n

The $120,000 pay a Ford mechanic makes is roughly twice what the typical American worker earns. Shutter2U \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n

Rich Garrity, a board member of the National Association of Manufacturers, agreed with Farley\u2019s grim assessment.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think his comment was spot on,\u201d he told The Post.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not just missing bodies, but we\u2019re really missing, I\u2019d say, skill sets that can connect to 21st-century manufacturing needs,\u201d said Garrity, who\u2019s chief business unit officer at the additive manufacturing firm Stratasys.<\/p>\n

The mechanic shortage at Ford is part of a broader crisis hitting manufacturing and the skilled trades.<\/p>\n

As of August, the Bureau of Labor Statistics counted more than 400,000 open manufacturing positions \u2014 despite 4.3% unemployment.<\/p>\n

Last year, the Manufacturing Institute and Deloitte surveyed 200 manufacturing firms and found recruiting and retention topped the list of challenges for more than half of them.<\/p>\n

The automotive industry alone faces an annual shortfall of about 37,000 trained technicians<\/a>, according to the National Automobile Dealers Association.<\/p>\n

The BLS projects an average of 67,800 openings for automotive service technicians<\/a> and mechanics each year through 2033.<\/p>\n

Farley sounded incredulous about the dire shortage, adding: \u201cA bay with a lift and tools and no one to work in it \u2014 are you kidding me? Nope.\u201d<\/p>\n

Part of the problem is demographics. Baby boomers are retiring from the trades faster than millennials and Gen Zers are entering them.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not just about numbers. The skills required to work in manufacturing have evolved, according to Garrity.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of the openings that we see today, it\u2019s not just manual of days past, but combining manual and digital skill,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s an area that we continue to see a real gap in.\u201d<\/p>\n

To make matters worse, trade schools and community colleges haven\u2019t kept pace with the technology, according to Garrity.<\/p>\n

Last year saw a 16% spike in trade school enrollment \u2014 a record high since the National Student Clearinghouse began collecting data in 2018. Meanwhile, four-year college enrollment is down 0.6% from fall 2020 to fall 2023. KOTO \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n

\u201cThe community colleges, the career tech programs do a solid job in providing foundational training, but we often see that they\u2019re out of date when it comes to keeping up with how fast things are moving from a technology standpoint,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we talk about additive manufacturing, robotics, automation, EV batteries, we see very few focus curriculums that can keep up with that.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are signs of change. Last year saw a 16% spike in trade school enrollment \u2014 a record high since the National Student Clearinghouse began collecting data in 2018.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, four-year college enrollment is down 0.6% from fall 2020 to fall 2023, and trade school enrollment grew 4.9% over the same period.<\/a><\/p>\n

Garrity said the shift reflects a changing reality about education and career paths.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor many years in the US, it was, you go to a four-year college and things are set up for you,\u201d he noted.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd the reality is, that path is not necessarily what it used to be. A more valuable path, in many cases, is getting a technical college or apprenticeship and starting to learn certain skills very early on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ford has tried to make its jobs more attractive. The company ditched its lowest-wage tier and committed to 25% raises over four years in its latest contract with the United Auto Workers union.<\/a><\/p>\n

But higher wages alone can\u2019t solve the problem if there aren\u2019t enough trained workers to hire.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a different level of skill that\u2019s needed, and frankly, we don\u2019t have the pipeline of workers that are coming ready with those skills,\u201d Garrity said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ford has been unable to fill some 5,000 openings for mechanics despite offering a salary of $120,000 a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":41071,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[288,9415,8810,9,11,10,10893],"class_list":{"0":"post-41070","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-detroit","10":"tag-ford","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-headlines","13":"tag-new-york-news","14":"tag-trade"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41070"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41070\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}