> They could find exactly one old retired guy with the knowledge and experience to make a mold, across several states.

Have you considered the issue being no company is willing to do on-the-job training ?

I hardly can believe that retired guy had everything figured out prior to starting his first day of work.

Yes, there is a lack of people with tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars to start a mass manufacturing business of parts everyone can get in China for a tenth of the cost.

There is not a lack of mechanics who can assemble Fords on a factory line from pre-built components with instructions. FFS.

Yes, America has a serious problem. No, the Ford CEO is not actually pointing it out. He's fucking lying so he can justify using what amounts to slave labor in other countries while also touting "patriotism" branding while also refusing to do even the tiniest possible to alleviate the problem via training.

Ford mechanic explaining where is a problem.

https://www.motor1.com/news/774805/ford-ceo-complains-shorta...

indeed.com

It's very state dependent.

For example, by law in California, auto mechanics make double minimum wage if they don't own their tools (so they can go buy some). That works out to about $68k/yr these days.

$120k/yr is not suuuuuper crazy in some areas for some auto work (think restoration). But generally, yes, Ford is not adding up here

I think what the parent is critical about is the "cost center" labeling, because yes once it’s wrongly labeled like this nobody wants to pay for it.

Alternatively, we have decades of credentials inflation such that our high school graduates can indeed do math - but we choose to pretend they can’t and instead insist that an expensive undergraduate degree is required for entry level work.

The most dysfunctional aspects of public education have less to do with the education and more to do with the home lives of the children we are trying to educate.

In my town, most of the cost of education is just paying teachers. The school system is expensive because paying a lot of teachers is expensive, as is maintaining school buildings. And guess what? Teachers still don't make that much, especially because the union typically has to fight hard for the even basic cost-of-living raises, classroom materials are often not reimbursed by the school, and teachers have hours of unpaid non-overtime overtime work.

And the funny thing about the cost of living raises? The costs are going up because of things like housing, food, and energy for heating. Corporate profits are at generational highs and wealth inequality is growing. So teachers, just like the rest of us, are subject to greater and greater consumer surplus extraction, effectively sucking wealth out of the towns where they live and work. And then taxpayers in those towns need to keep paying for their raises, but those same taxpayers are subject to the same consumer surplus extraction.

Families with two working parents, families struggling to pay for rent and heat and food, families where everyone is addicted to social media... none of that is conducive to kids showing up and being ready to spend 8 hours learning stuff, not to mention drilling and retaining and developing an understanding of what they learned.

Everything is politics and everything is economics. Society is a deeply interconnected ecosystem. School is dysfunctional because families are dysfunctional, suffering from degradation of social structures and severe economic pressure. School is expensive teachers are expensive, and teachers are expensive because they are suffering from the same economic pressure as the families who send their kids to school.

Every household is a little capillary in a great circulatory system of money. Income goes in one end and spending goes out the other end. What's happening now is that most capillaries are receiving smaller and smaller shares of the total flow, while some special ones are swollen larger than we have ever seen before. When people say that the system is rigged, this is what they mean. Is it any surprise that the people with the power to change where the money flows are using that power to make sure more of it flows to themselves?

US has PISA scores that are roughly equivalent to Western Europe. I think the kids who can do math just get sorted into better jobs.

There are plenty of high school and college graduates that can do elementary school math. They are just going into more lucrative fields. If Ford wants those candidates, they need to offer more competitive salaries.

From what I have read online, failing high school is almost impossible. GPAs inflated to the point of useless.

Ahh, yes the key to mathematics being an issue is public education. We should privatize it so that half the population goes from under educated to completely uneducated.

Or maybe we could go with the coal town model and have children accrue debt to a major corporation that they can literally never pay off in exchange for an education!

>mechanics lose money working on them because Ford doesn’t accurately represent the time it takes to fix something

I believe this is mainly for warranty or recall work. If it's out of warranty, then the charges can be much higher. It also depends on the difficulty of the work being done. I had my Mustangs rear diff seal replaced under warranty, and I guarantee you that doing that wasn't that bad in terms of pay or time taken.

It sounds like this is the actual problem and instead of paying exorbitant salaries or fixing the entire US education system Ford just needs to face reality and accept how long repairs actually take and pay for that time. That and/or redesign their cars to take less time to repair.

Community Colleges being considered corrupt is not an accusation I’ve heard. Is there something behind this or are you grouping them with the issues seen with Public Universities and grants/loans fueling spiraling tuition?

The Community College I went to was about $20 per unit and offered a great education. Currently they’re $46 per unit. The instructors worked in the industry and were sharper than my 200 level University course instructors I paid $100 per unit for the year after my Associates Degree. I went to University as the Great Recession happened and had to go back to Community College as financial markets melted (and some life events happened) and that Associates Degree and an additional quarter of a Bachelors has served me well. I got my first job in software through a Community College affiliated internship, hopped to a Startup, and after a lot of years in between I’m on here musing with the rest of the industry.

There are certainly “Extension” or non Trades “Certificate Only” programs but when looking at LinkedIn’s Alumni view they’ve minted a lot of Solar Techs, Electricians, and Building Engineers. I took Electronics courses as an elective with the PV guys and it was a lot of fun and seems rather profitable for that cohort.

Ergo, I’m genuinely curious to know if this has been derailed in some way at large. Do you have any links to news on this?

> Investing in community college programs is one route since they are essentially a business.

A 501c3 nonprofit with pretty stringent requirements (accreditation, reporting, transparency), but yes a business nonetheless.

> The main problem with the CCs is that they are very corrupt, have been issuing students worthless degrees.

Could you elaborate on what you mean by corrupt, and issuing students worthless degrees? Graduates from the program I direct at a community college are generally earning 120-160k in IT around 2 years after graduation.

> The colleges' goal is reaching a "graduation quota," and not "employability."

Universities yes, community colleges I would not consider this an accurate statement. At my community college our CTE programs (job training) are explicitly evaluated on student salaries as well as how many are actually employed in the industry after graduation, usually within 18-36 months time. It's actually two of the few metrics that are considered "high value", as in 2x the other value of other metrics like graduation, enrollment, retention, revenue-per-student, etc.

I was actually referring to full universities. The university I went to was a feeding school for local defense contractors and major conglomerates. I am quite certain that the universities in Redmond are assisted by Boeing, Microsoft and Amazon, as well.

https://www.calculatorsoup.com/calculators/financial/salary-...

I did the math in my head based on something I saw someone else share earlier today; but I was probably a bit off. Putting in 120k on this website for this year turns into about 58k in 1995

> What if we pay for all of this training and they leave?”

This is a solved problem. If they quit early, they owe the cost of the education.

Because it takes a lot more education to work at a modern factory than what it took in 1930.

The rest of the world has kept up. Even if you could hypothetically cram 12 years of education into six months of training, the kind of mental effort required to go through that training would be quite impossible for the average person.

But why do that when it’s so much easier to blame AI or immigration, or whatever the new boogeyman of the day is.

"Can't" and "Won't" are two different things.

> Why not pay them 300k/year? 500k?

That's a great idea! We could take the difference from the CEO's pay.

They (and everyone else) should be paid the maximum amount the company can afford to pay while still being sustainable.

You raise a valid point that doesn't deserve the downvoting...

But have you considered it fully? We're in a heap of shit if the pay that employers can truly afford is lower than the pay that employees require to earn the minimal livelihood. If there is really realsy no overlap there, then you need to stock up on canned food and shotgun shells.

I encourage you to Google it rather than speculate, as this information is readily available.

> This year's program… is offering $5,000 scholarships to 800 potential automotive technicians from across the country. This year, the program is available across 42 states and for students attending nearly 600 schools. In addition to tuition assistance, scholarship funds can be used to cover day-to-day related expenses like living and transportation, childcare, and tools needed for class and more.

Whether you believe all of that scholarship money will actually be given out is another question.

https://www.fromtheroad.ford.com/us/en/articles/2025/ford-ph...

At that scale, it starts to become reasonable to consider using the money to fund private job training programs instead.

People on here surprise me sometimes with what they down vote. $4 million dollars is 0.00002162% of the total revenue Ford US had in 2024. When you put that little value on future employees and skills, it is clear why you have such a struggle finding competent staff.

A trucker (CDL) is the only one without extremely high apprenticeship requirements.

From there, who thought that you'd need a bachelors to be a barista and pour coffee? It's not just about the raw requirements, but about the competition you face in the job market.

Finally, more and more field service technician and electrician, HVAC, roles that are traditionally GED/2-years only, have extremely high experience requirements, and most are preferring people pursuing or with a bachelors in electrical engineering (electrician, HVAC), mechanical/fluid engineering (plumbing), or similar. Earlier this year I was in a remote-ish location (about 100 miles from a major city) and we had an electrical fault that legally required a licensed electrician to repair. We had multiple electrical engineers offer to help who clearly knew the problem and how to fix it according to code, but we couldn't let them touch it because they didn't have their J or better.

If you want to risk no degree and go for your 8,000 hours to get licensed (roughly 4 years experience for no/mediocre pay), go for it.

Generally the rule is you buy your own tools and then take them with you if you leave the shop.

Lots of mechanics prefer owning their own tools because the community shop tools will end up beat up and not cared for. Plus, another thing locking you down to the location. On the other hand that's yet another personal expense.

> Do mechanics prefer to work with their own tools, or is this like a restaurant getting away with paying a tipped employee less than minimum wage because they can?

Part from Column A and part from Column B.

It's also part of the accounting gimmicks to keep mechanics as "contractors" rather than "employees".

Which is why all the whining rings hollow.