Ford flags severe shortage as 5,000 mechanic jobs go unfilled despite $120k salaries

Ford has been unable to hire for around 5,000 mechanic vacancies, despite offering $120,000 a year, prompting the company’s chief executive to raise concerns about a deepening shortage of skilled tradespeople in the United States.

“We are in trouble in our country. We are not talking about this enough,” CEO Jim Farley said on an episode of the “Office Hours: Business Edition” podcast released earlier this week. He cited more than a million openings in roles such as emergency services, trucking, factory work, plumbing, electrical work and other trades. “It’s a very serious thing,” he added.

Concerns over training and shifting skill needs

Farley said it takes about five years to acquire the expertise needed to remove a diesel engine from a Ford Super Duty truck, yet the country is not producing enough workers with those skills. “We do not have trade schools,” he said. Earlier this year, Ford launched a $4 million initiative to fund scholarships for auto technicians. He noted that the US is “not investing in educating a next generation of people like my grandfather”, who was employee 389 at Ford and helped build the Model T.

Rich Garrity, a board member of the National Association of Manufacturers, backed Farley’s assessment. “I think his comment was spot on,” he told The New York Post. Garrity, who is also chief business unit officer at Stratasys, said the shortage reflects not only a lack of workers but a lack of skills aligned with modern manufacturing. “A lot of the openings that we see today, it’s not just manual of days past, but combining manual and digital skill,” he said, adding that training programmes at trade schools and community colleges often lag behind the pace of technological change.

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Vacancies rise as older workers retire

The issue stretches across the wider manufacturing sector. As of August, the Bureau of Labor Statistics recorded more than 400,000 open manufacturing jobs despite 4.3% unemployment. A survey last year by the Manufacturing Institute and Deloitte found that more than half of 200 firms ranked recruiting and retention as top challenges. In the automotive sector, the National Automobile Dealers Association estimates an annual shortage of around 37,000 trained technicians. The BLS projects an average of 67,800 openings for automotive service technicians and mechanics each year through 2033.

Farley expressed disbelief at the situation: “A bay with a lift and tools and no one to work in it—are you kidding me? Nope.” The demographic shift is significant, with baby boomers retiring faster than younger generations are entering the trades.

Trade schools have shown signs of resurgence, however. Last year saw a 16% rise in trade school enrolment, the highest since the National Student Clearinghouse began tracking the data in 2018. Four-year college enrolment fell 0.6% from autumn 2020 to autumn 2023, while trade school enrolment grew 4.9% over the same period. Garrity said the change reflects evolving views on education: “A more valuable path, in many cases, is getting a technical college or apprenticeship and starting to learn certain skills very early on.”

Ford has introduced measures to make its roles more appealing, scrapping its lowest-wage tier and agreeing to 25% raises over four years in its latest deal with the United Auto Workers union.

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