Wednesday, March 14, 2012

With Car Sales Surging, Auto Parts Suppliers in Michigan Are Booming, Adding Thousands of Jobs

From Michigan Public Radio:

"Detroit automakers are creating thousands of new jobs amid a sales boom. And as they expand, their suppliers are racing to keep up, adding tens of thousands of new jobs.  In a dramatic reversal, many suppliers, after improving efficiency — through downsizing and buyouts — find themselves short-handed.

With the memory of the Great Recession still so fresh, companies are still wary about hiring too freely. But Sean McAlinden, economist with the Center for Automotive Research, says there actually is a danger of having a shortage of parts and workers. He says the supplier industry will need 174,000 additional workers by 2015, and the pace of hiring right now appears to be too slow.

Even when suppliers intend to hire right away, it's not easy. When all those supply companies went dark, many skilled tradesmen, machinists and engineers moved on." 

MP: Quite a reversal from a few years ago that auto parts suppliers in Michigan might now be facing a worker shortage

3 Comments:

At 3/14/2012 12:13 PM, Blogger Buddy R Pacifico said...

A contributor at MarketWatch writes about "the looming U.S. labor shortage".

Here is an opening line:

"The change in thinking we’re going to undergo is shifting from a mindset of “we don’t have enough jobs for our citizens” to “we don’t have enough citizens for the amount of work we want to do.”

Further:

"We’re going to need a lot more automation and job destruction from tech and engineering companies."

I am not ready to accept the above premise; but there seems to be labor shortages in areas where skilled Baby-boomers are retiring from.

 
At 3/14/2012 2:33 PM, Blogger rjs said...

co-incidentally, U.S. manufacturers, frustrated by a shortage of skilled American factory workers, are going abroad to find them.

Business for factories has surged recently, creating a huge demand for machinists, tool and die makers, computer-controlled machine programmers and operators.

manufacturers have been relying on foreign workers to fill the gaps through H-1B visas...paying foreign workers as much as $100,000

http://money.cnn.com/2012/03/05/smallbusiness/manufacturing-workers/index.htm

 
At 3/14/2012 7:35 PM, Blogger jorod said...

Sounds like speculation to me. Maybe we need government price controls.

 

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