Ford’s struggle to recruit thousands of high-paying auto technicians has spilled into a broader debate about the state of the US workforce, after Tesla CEO Elon Musk weighed in on the matter.
Musk said the country faces a “real shortage” of people able to do “challenging physical work”, adding that many refuse to also seek training for them, a point that has reignited debate amid ongoing H-1B visa arguments.
‘Can’t find mechanics to work for $120k’
The controversy was kick-started by Ford Motor Company CEO Jim Farley, who revealed that the company has been unable to fill 5,000 mechanic positions, despite the jobs paying around $120,000 a year, nearly double the US average salary.
“[The US is] in trouble,” Farley warned on the ‘Office Hours: Business Edition’ podcast.
“We have over a million openings in critical jobs, emergency services, trucking, factory workers, plumbers, electricians, tradesmen. It’s a very serious thing. We do not have trade schools. We are not investing in educating a next generation of people like my grandfather, who had nothing and built a middle-class life,” he added
Does skill set deficit have a role to play?
Rich Garrity, a National Association of Manufacturers board member, reacted to Farley’s lament and said much of the crisis could to attributed to a skill set deficit, due to a lack of concrete foundational training courses available for students in the country’s educational system.
“We’re not just missing bodies, but we’re really missing…skill sets that can connect to 21st-century manufacturing needs. The community colleges, the career tech programs do a solid job in providing foundational training, but we often see that they’re out of date when it comes to keeping up with how fast things are moving from a technology standpoint,” he told the New York Post.
As of late 2025, the US has roughly 4,00,000 manufacturing vacancies, according to Fortune’s analysis of Labor Department data, even as the national unemployment rate sits at 4.3%.
Ford has attempted to respond with a $4 million technician-training scholarship, but Farley cautioned that national investment remains inadequate.
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics projects only about 3-4% growth in automotive technician jobs through 2034, but expects about 67,000 openings every year, largely because older mechanics are retiring faster than new ones are being trained, reports claimed.