Ford CEO warns America is ‘in trouble.’ Car giant has 5,000 mechanic jobs paying $120K/year unfilled. Why it’s a problem

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Headlines astir the U.S. occupation marketplace haven’t precisely been encouraging successful 2025. Wage maturation has cooled, big-tech layoffs support surfacing and worries astir a slowdown persist. But according to Ford CEO Jim Farley, there’s different broadside of the labour marketplace that seldom makes the beforehand page: high-paying jobs that are inactive retired determination — and going unfilled.

In a caller quality connected the Office Hours: Business Edition podcast, Farley recalled however his gramps managed to physique a “middle people beingness and a aboriginal for his family” done a blue-collar occupation astatine Ford — and insisted that akin opportunities inactive beryllium contiguous (1).

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“Those jobs are retired there: mechanics successful a Ford dealership. As of this morning, we had 5,000 openings. A bay with a assistance and tools and nary 1 to enactment successful it,” Farley said. “$120,000 a occupation a year, but it takes you 5 years to larn it. Take a diesel retired of a Superduty — it takes a batch of skill. You request to cognize what you're doing.”

It’s a striking opposition to the broader net picture. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median play earning for full-time U.S. workers successful Q2 2025 was $1,196 — astir $62,192 a twelvemonth (2). Farley’s numbers suggest that thousands of roles wage astir treble that figure.

So wherefore aren’t workers flocking to these jobs?

Farley points to a systemic shortage of grooming and acquisition for skilled trades.

“We person implicit a cardinal openings successful captious jobs — exigency services, trucking, mill workers, plumbers, electricians and tradesmen. It's a precise superior thing. We bash not person commercialized schools. We are not investing successful educating a adjacent procreation of radical similar my gramps who had nothing, who built a middle-class beingness and a aboriginal for his family,” helium said.

Farley’s gramps was the 389th worker hired astatine Ford. Today, the company’s workforce stands astatine astir 180,000. Yet Farley argues that the pipeline feeding those hands-on roles has eroded — and that the consequences spell acold beyond economics.

“God forbid we ever get successful a war, Google's not going to beryllium capable to marque the tanks and the planes. So, this is simply a self-defense for our state issue,” helium said.