5,000 Job Openings With 6-Figure Salaries Remain Unfulfilled at Ford: CEO

The country is facing a critical manufacturing job crisis, according to Ford CEO Jim Farley.

Workers assemble cars at Ford's newly renovated assembly plant in Chicago on June 24, 2019. Jim Young/AFP via Getty Images

Ford has 5,000 job openings for mechanics offering a six-figure salary, a sign of the skilled manual labor shortage facing the United States, the company’s CEO, Jim Farley, said in a Nov. 12 interview on the “Office Hours: Business Edition” podcast.

“We have over a million openings in critical jobs, emergency services, trucking, factory workers, plumbers, electricians, and tradesmen. It’s a very serious thing. We do not have trade schools. We are not investing in educating the next generation of people like my grandfather, who had nothing, who built a middle-class life and a future for his family,” the Ford CEO told podcast host Monica Langley.

“As of this morning, we had 5,000 openings. A bay with a lift and tools and no one to work in. $120,000 a job a year, but it takes you five years to learn it. Take a diesel out of a Super Duty. It takes a lot of skill. You need to know what you’re doing.”

He was referring to job positions at Ford, while Super Duty refers to Ford’s truck offerings.

According to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 409,000 manufacturing job openings in the United States as of August.

In the trade, transportation, and utilities sector, there were 1.14 million job openings, while the construction sector had 188,000 jobs unfilled.

Farley said that the United States is in trouble as a country when it comes to the essential economy.

Essential economy refers to industries such as manufacturing, logistics and transportation, construction, energy, public services, and skilled trades.

The essential economy employs 95 million people in the United States across 3 million businesses, contributing to more than a third of the country’s gross domestic product.

In the interview, Farley warned that the United States would be in trouble in a war situation, given the shortage of skilled manual labor.

“God forbid we ever get in a war; Google’s not going to be able to make the tanks and the planes. So this is a self-defense for our country issue,” he said.

Farley said Ford has done away with the two-tier wage system, where some workers were paid $17 per hour while others were paid $25 per hour. The company had seen a “huge” employee turnover under the two-tier system, he said.

The shortage of workers in manufacturing is happening for multiple reasons, with the aging workforce being a main cause, according to a report by manufacturing software company CADDi.

Many of the skilled and experienced manufacturing workers are nearing their retirement age. When these people retire, they take the skills and experience with them that only exist within their minds and not on company systems.

This exodus of experienced employees makes it difficult for companies to train new workers and maintain quality standards, it stated, noting that the manufacturing sector is also facing challenges when it comes to attracting newer generations to the industry.

Shortage Issue, Government Action

A survey of small business owners conducted by the National Federation of Independent Business found that many of them were struggling with a labor shortage, the group said in a Nov. 11 statement.

Many owners “want to hire but are having difficulty doing so,” according to Bill Dunkelberg, chief economist at the federation.

A Sept. 16 statement from Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce warned that the U.S. economy was facing a “skills shortage crisis in critical occupations.”

Through 2032, there could be a shortfall of 200,000 construction workers and 402,000 drivers, sales workers, and truck drivers in the United States, it stated.

“[Such shortages] may be driven in part by the characteristics of jobs in these occupations, including inflexible hours and industry norms that may deter younger workers,” the statement reads.

The Trump administration is taking action to raise the skills of the U.S. workforce.

In April, President Donald Trump signed an executive order aimed at modernizing the U.S. workforce to prepare citizens for high-paying, skilled jobs, according to an April 23 White House fact sheet.

“[The executive order] will meet the needs of the future with a focus on registered apprenticeships. The Administration will submit a plan to support more than 1 million apprenticeships per year,” it reads.

In a June 30 statement, the Department of Labor announced a grant of almost $84 million to 50 states and territories, aimed at increasing the capacity of Registered Apprenticeship programs.

The grant was an important step to meet the Trump administration’s “goal of expanding the program to 1 million active apprentices,” it stated.