He didn’t think he’d get a job after graduation.
“I was stressed out about it. … I was not happy about graduating in December,” said Prince, a supply chain management major.
But by mid-March, Prince landed the job he wanted as
a buyer at auto supplier Freudenberg-NOK — an experience that
illustrates how the automotive job market is thawing.
After bouts with bankruptcy, and historically low
sales, automakers are ramping up production and working on new vehicles
again. That’s leading to new hourly work at
The new work won’t fix unemployment anytime soon.
But it is already helping to chip away at a sector’s need for jobs and
move the national economy in a positive direction.
“I had to hire more recruiters,” said
Though employers are moving cautiously, the trend is
expected to continue throughout the year as consumers buy more new cars
and trucks.
U.S. auto sales through March are already up 15.5
percent compared with last year, leading automakers to plan to build
more. Light-vehicle production — a key driver for employment in the
auto sector — is expected to rise 34 percent this year.
“The best aspect of this rebound that we’re seeing
is that it is stable,” said Michael Robinet, vice president of global
vehicle forecasting for CSM Worldwide.
CSM expects production to gradually increase in 2011 and 2012.
As auto suppliers realize that higher volumes are not an aberration, they are more apt to hire.
“We think in many respects, a lot of suppliers are at that decision point right now,” Robinet said.
Lear is taking applications to fill 285 jobs at its plant in
Ford and GM are hiring in their salaried ranks and have recalled hourly workers at some of their plants.
Urban Science is hiring for 11 jobs at its
A Raymond, a
“We’re finding a need to fill a lot of those spots that we had to eliminate before,” said
Even with a boost in sales, automotive companies aren’t opening their doors to a flood of new hires.
Metal castings maker
Citation, has hired about 300 people since December. But it remains
tentative, concerned about another downturn in the economy.
“It’s really a week-by-week situation,” said
The pool of applications can be enormous for open jobs in this economy.
Michigan Works stopped taking applications for jobs at the new
Still, Pitoniak said, job opportunities are on the rise.
“More and more employers are making the commitment to hire,” he said.
While the pool of job seekers is big, the number of
qualified candidates may be only a few. As more jobs open up, some
recruiters find they have competition for the right candidate.
“We’re seeing candidates find other opportunities where we didn’t move fast enough. And we lost them,” Bejin said.
Urban Science hired only 33 people in
SAE, which hosts an annual engineering job fair in
That’s up from the 12 employers that showed up last year and met more than 1,000 job candidates.
This year, expect to see GM, Chrysler,
“It’s … a sign of a comeback,” Schanno said.
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