A report by the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor MI concludes that Detroit will begin hiring again as soon as September, and should add some 46k jobs by 2016. According to Detroit News, the report is based on "interviews with Big Three officials and others in the auto industry," so, y'know… have that salt ready. The average age of UAW workers in Michigan is 50, and the majority of new hires between now and 2016 will be replacements for retiring and bought out workers. In fact, Michigan's 129k industry employees will dwindle to about 108k by 2016, says the report. Replacements for longtime UAW workers will fall under the new two-tier wage structure, meaning Detroit's hirings will not only be under replacement levels, but they will also contribute greatly to declining wages in the industry. Factor in projected labor shortages for skilled workers in Michigan, and the Detroit News' headline seems more than a little overoptimistic. But hey, this is what passes for good news in Detroit these days.
Find Reviews by Make:
Read all comments
Are you implying that Detroit residents and or autoworkers in general are dummies? I think the photo accompanying your headline is a little distasteful, even for you guys.
gamper, obviously you are the last one not to know, but you see there’s this publishing firm called John Wiley & Sons that publishes a wide array of useful, entertaining, and informative books called the “for Dummies” series.
The placement here is actually an extremely good riff on a story about hiring.
Thank you for the irony.
Sometimes when I wake up in the morning, look around Michigan and groan because up here we get two seasons instead of four (“WINTER” which lasts from around September through April and “ROAD CONSTRUCTION” which is highly ironic because the roads in our state are the worst in the union).
Maybe we Michiganders ARE dummies….
Kevin, I am well aware of “For Dummies” series of books, even owning at least one myself. Home Improvement for Dummies I believe. One can certainly argue that the intention was to use it as a “riff” in hiring (“extremely good” is going a little far) but most everyone knows it was much more likely a jab at Detroit, which was apparently lost on you. I guess you are correct with the Irony comment, just misdirected.
I’ll bet $100 on the under.
Good news! They have a sales on jobs in Michigan, they are all 1/2 price!
No surprise. The US of ‘Merica can’t run trade deficits forever. Eventually, Americans are going to have to make some of the stuff they use, because they have no money to buy it overseas, nor will anyone extent anymore credit to them.
Manufacturing jobs will return to the US, but this time the competition is global, and the real wages and benefits ain’t gonna be like the old days. People will take these jobs because they have no other choice.
Because working class wages will trend downward, the tax base will contract for many states/municipalities, so eventually real wages of cops, teachers, judges and the parasite class(lawyers/politicians) will contract as well.
Reality can only be ignored for so long. Wealth comes from the production of useful goods and services, not from parasites like lawyers, “right-wing” radio blow-hards, or corporate vultures.
I pray that I live to see the day when ex-lawyers are working on an auto assembly line, installing windshields at piece work wages, while their Chinese boss screams obscenities at them.
Welcome to reality, parasites.
The problem with US manufacturing is that unions priced labor so high that manufactures had to move things over seas to stay profitable.
The price of raw materials also contributed, but the wages were the last nail in the coffin.