Ford CEO Jim Farley has recently said that the US is facing a critical shortage of skilled labour, with the automaker struggling to fill 5,000 mechanic positions despite offering salaries of up to $120,000 (about Rs 1 crore) —nearly double the median American wage. Farley made the remarks on the Office Hours: Business Edition podcast, calling the situation “a wake-up call.”
He told host Monica Langley that the problem extends beyond Ford. “We have over a million openings in critical jobs—emergency services, trucking, factory workers, plumbers, electricians, and tradesmen. It’s a very serious thing,” he said.
Elaborating on the amount of time it takes to train workers, the Ford CEO said learning to take a diesel engine out of a Ford Super Duty truck takes at least five years. He attributed the problem to the lack of education and training. The current system is not meeting the standard, he added.
Yet, Farley said it is these mechanical jobs like the ones at Ford that made the US "what it is" and let people such as his grandfather -- who was employee 389 at the company -- to have good lives. “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,” he said.
Trump defends H1-B visa: We don't have a lot of talented people in the US
The Ford CEO's comments also come at a time when even the US President Donald Trump has acknowledged the need to bring skilled labour into the country despite his administration tightening visa rules that make it harder for organisations seeking such workers.
In an interview with Fox News’s Laura Ingraham, Trump was on Tuesday asked whether H-1B visas would remain a priority, with Ingraham arguing that the programme could conflict with his push to raise domestic wages.
“You also do have to bring in talent,” Trump said. When Ingraham said the US already had “plenty of talented people here,” he said: “No, you don’t.”
“You don’t have certain talents. And you have to, people have to learn. You can’t take people off, like an unemployment line, and say, ‘I’m going to put you into a factory. We’re going to make missiles,’” he said.
This comes months after his administration imposed a $100,000 application fee on the H-1B visa -- a programme heavily relied upon by major US firms, particularly in the tech sector, to hire overseas talent.
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