To
November's excellent sales for U.S. auto manufacturers and their first
gain in market share since 1988, add this piece of
good news:
U.S. and foreign automakers are poised to add nearly 167,000 U.S. jobs by the end of 2015, according to the nonprofit Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich. That breaks down to 30,000 hourly and salaried workers at the Big Three U.S. automakers, 17,000 jobs at foreign automakers and about 120,000 auto-supply sector jobs.
"The industry has pretty much hired back just about everybody from the automotive side that had been laid off. And now they're hiring fresh, so they're actually adding to their rosters. And it's not just the Detroit automakers. It's everybody," said Aaron Bragman, senior analyst at IHS Automotive in Northville, Mich.
The jobs added will be of widely varying quality, and even the union jobs added at Ford, GM and Chrysler will be at the lower second-tier wages, currently around $15 but rising to around $19 over the years of the contracts auto workers recently signed with those manufacturers. Still, having a manufacturing sector rebounding in America is a rare note of good news for workers.