When GM and Chrysler were in trouble back in 2009, unemployment in the state of Michigan was at 14.2 percent, the worst in the United States. Today, following the government bailout and the two groups’ impressive recovery, that number has fallen closer to the 8.3 percent national average at 9.0 percent.
What’s more, there is more demand for automotive engineers than there are people looking for a job in the field.
Andrew Watt, the head of iTalent LLC in Troy who finds engineers and IT workers for car companies in nine states, told The Detroit News that according to his estimates, the average “shelf life” of an auto engineer looking for employment is three days.
“If their skills are even on the edges of automotive”, says Watt, “they can get a job. There’s an extreme shortage. There’s way much more demand than supply.”
Being a free country and all means that the laws of demand and supply work in the employees favor. Watt estimates that, while the normal pay for such a job starts at US80,000 per year and has a ceiling of about US$120,000, the shortage means that the average engineering and IT worker’s payment leans toward the high end of the spectrum.
Speaking to the Detroit News, he even cited an example where a recent recruit got a US$17,000 raise and a 20 percent bonus just to move from Tennessee to Michigan.
In the last few months, demand from Michigan-based companies such as the Detroit Big Three, Nissan and Toyota has risen sharply according to the Society of Automotive Engineers recruitment and sales manager Martha Schanno.
Schanno reveals that job posting have quadrupled from less than 100 to more than 400 – with Chrysler alone asking for 300 employees.
Michigan governor Rick Snyder attributes this phenomenon to the US educational system: “We’ve had kind of a dumb system in our country”, he says. “The private sector is out with its demand, and there’s no strategic perspective in the educational system to say let’s match supply and demand.”
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