Ford Motor Company CEO Jim Farley has raised concerns about the state of the US job market, saying Ford has been unable to fill 5,000 mechanic jobs paying $120,000 a year.
Farley said the $120,000 salary figure is nearly double the US average.
“[US is] in trouble…“We have over a million openings in critical jobs, emergency services, trucking, factory workers, plumbers, electricians and 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, who built a middle class life and a future for his family,” Farley said in a recent ‘Office Hours: Business Edition’ podcast.
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colleges, the career tech programs do a solid job in providing foundational training, but we often see that they’re out of date when it comes to keeping up with how fast things are moving from a technology standpoint,” he told the New York Post.
In fact, the US currently has about 4,00,000 manufacturing jobs available in the market as of late 2025, The Fortune reported citing data from the US Labor of Statistics, despite the country’s unemployment rate being 4.3%.
Ford on its part launched a $4 million scholarship program earlier this year to help train new auto technicians, but Farley warned the nation still isn’t investing enough in developing future skilled workers, AOL repoted.
US has labour shortage: Musk
Weighing in on the matter, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said there is a shortage of people who can perform ‘physically challenging’ work in the US.
He also pointed towards a lack of willingness among people to undergo training for such roles.
While the US Bureau of Labor Statistics has projected a modest 3-4% growth for automotive technician jobs through 2034, it also estimates around 67,000 annual job openings due primarily to retirements and attrition.