Ford CEO has 5,000 open mechanic jobs with up to 6-figure salaries from shortage of manual skilled workers: ‘We have a problem in our country’

Ford CEO Jim Farley thinks America needs a wake-up call.

Speaking to Office Hours: Business Edition podcast, Farley said Ford has 5,000 open mechanic positions it has yet to fill, despite the possibility of an eye-popping $120,000 salary—roughly double the median salary of the American worker.

And not just Ford, Farley added. The carmaker’s struggle to fill jobs that require training and manual labor is indicative of a general shortage of manual-labor jobs in the US, he added.

“We have trouble in our country. We don’t talk about it,” Farley told host Monica Langley. “We have over a million openings in critical jobs, emergency services, trucking, factory workers, plumbers, electricians, and tradesmen. This is very serious stuff.”

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump has focused his agenda on the economy brought manufacturing back to the USthere remains a gap between the number of factory jobs open and the number of people willing to fill them.

There were 394,000 manufacturing jobs open in November, according to preliminary data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, despite a Unemployment is 4.4%which is higher than previous years. A 2024 study from the Manufacturing Institute and Deloitte also found more than half of the 200 manufacturing companies surveyed said recruiting and retaining workers was their top struggle.

Still, Farley said blue-collar jobs, like the one open at Ford, “make our country what it is,” and allow people like his grandfather—who worked on the company’s flagship Model T and the company’s 389 employees—to have good lives.

Farley said the company is doing better on wages. It has cut its lowest wage, and agreed to give workers a 25% pay bump over four years as part of its deal with the United Auto Workers union in 2023.

However, part of the problem with the lack of manufacturing jobs is a lack of education and training, according to Farley. He noted, for example, that learning how to remove a diesel engine from a Ford Super Duty truck takes at least five years. The current system does not meet the standard, he added.

“We don’t have trade schools,” he said. “We are not investing in educating the next generation of people like my grandfather who had nothing, who built a middle-class life and a future for his family.”

Certainly, young people can take the lead in filling the gap in manufacturing positions. Gen Z is increasingly straying from the traditional college path and attending trade schools in an effort to avoid crippling student loans while also getting a good-paying job.

Vocational school enrollment jumped 16% in 2024, rising to the highest level since the National Student Clearinghouse began tracking data in 2018, luck HISTORY reported. However, the top jobs pay more than $200,000 per year usually requires advanced degreesaccording to a study by the job platform Ladders.

A version of this story was published by Fortune.com on Nov. 12, 2025.