Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F) is planning to hire additional 800 white-collar employees by the end of the year. This shows that the car industry is thriving, and that the current number of workers in the industry is not enough to meet the strong demand for vehicles.
Ford Also Announced Hiring 2,000 Employees:
Last month, Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F) announced its plan to recruit 2,000 workers for its plant in Kansas City due to the increasing demand for its full-size pick-up. The company said employees that were previously laid off will be recalled to fill one-half of available positions.
Paul Eisenstein, a CNBC contributor, cited that Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F) aims to fill a total of 3,000 white-collar positions, and it has already recruited 2,200 white-collar staff this year. The company will focus its hiring in Southern, Michigan for the remaining 800 positions on engineering, information technology, product development, and manufacturing.
Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F) also plans to hire thousands of workers to maintain the operations of its assembly lines. Company sales are higher than the industry average year-over-year. For the first five months of 2013, its production is up by 13 percent. Last year, the company’s Ford Focus was the best-selling passenger car in a 2012 study conducted by the research firm R.L. Polk & Co.
Analysts projected that car industry sales of 14.5 million vehicles last year will increase by 1 million this year. The industry’s overall sales are up by 8.2 percent year-to-date. According to car manufacturers including Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F), General Motors Company (NYSE:GM), Chrysler, Hyundai Motor Co (KRX:005380), and Kia Motors Corporation (KRX:000270), they are being held back by lack of production capacity.
The report cited that the strong demand in the car industry is estimated to remain at approximately 15 million units over the next few years. Car manufacturers are now creating jobs at a fast rate after years of cutting jobs.
Forecasting firm LM Automotive projected that the volume of new vehicles will climb to around 17 million units by 2017. The figure is the same level as in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The firm cited that the strong demand will be driven by the need to replace older vehicles. This means that the car industry needs more talent to keep their production running and meet the strong demand. The Center for Automotive Research estimated that the car industry will add 35,000 jobs this year.
Mark Reynolds of Society Manufacturing Engineers said, “Engineering is a growth field. We don’t have enough engineers,” Manufacturing is also experiencing growth. Jobs are coming back to the country, and to Canada.”
