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Business Title: Automotive Engineers in Short Supply as U.S. Production Rebounds Ricardo Plc, a service provider to auto companies, is turning to billboards to find engineers as the industry, battered by last year’s bankruptcies of General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC, regains sales and production. Ricardo for the first time put up billboards along Detroit- area highways yesterday and started running radio ads touting the engineering-services company as an employment destination as fuel-economy standards drive demand for efficient powertrains. General Motors Co. and Chrysler Group LLC among others, are hiring as vehicle output recovers from more than 40-year lows. Competition for skilled employees is heating up even in Michigan, where the unemployment rate was 12.8 percent in October, 3 percentage points higher than the national average. The state’s jobless rate was second only to Nevada among U.S. states. “We’re all playing in the same sandbox, competing for some of the same talent,” Kent Niederhofer, president of Van Buren Township, Michigan-based Ricardo Inc., the U.S. unit of the engineering-services company. “It isn’t as simple as throwing a shingle out there and saying ‘Job Opening.’ Attracting this kind of talent has gotten absolutely tougher and we’re trying to raise our head above the crowd.” North American light-vehicle production fell 43 percent in 2009, the year when GM and Chrysler restructured under bankruptcy court protection. While still about three years from reaching 2007’s output of 15.1 million, volume should reach 12.9 million next year, a 50 percent increase from 2009, IHS Automotive in Northville, Michigan, forecasts. GM, Chrysler GM, the maker of the Chevrolet Volt gasoline-electric car, said last month it plans to hire 1,000 engineers in Michigan to help develop more electric vehicles. Detroit-based GM plans to sell 10,000 Volts next year and 45,000 in 2012. Chrysler, the Auburn Hills, Michigan-based automaker run by Fiat SpA, is hiring 1,000 engineers and high-tech workers for its small and midsize vehicles, about 60 percent will be Chrysler employees and the rest contractors, Mike Palese, a Chrysler spokesman, said in an e-mail. Most of the hires will be engineers and most will be based in the Detroit area, he said. Other companies hiring engineers in the state include Continental AG, the world’s biggest maker of car instruments and display systems, which is hiring 40 engineers in the Detroit area, and TRW Automotive Holdings Corp., the largest supplier of vehicle-safety equipment, which is hiring about 85 engineers. ‘In-Demand Jobs’ Competition for the engineers has intensified in recent months, John Wilkerson, a TRW spokesman, said in an e-mail. “These are in-demand jobs and there is lots of competition to find people with experience in some of the specialties we are looking for,” he said. Tata Technologies, a Novi, Michigan-based unit of Mumbai- based Tata Motors Ltd., is hiring about 400 automotive engineering consultants in the U.S. Mike Zwiezynski, a 54-year- old electrical engineer who took an early retirement from GM last year, came to Tata’s job fair at a Southfield, Michigan hotel last week. While he said he’s heard about the staffing plans, he said he expects the actual hiring to be gradual. In the meantime, he said he’s seeing more job openings and, at the job fair, at least one other potential indicator of job growth. “There are a lot fewer people at this one than the others I’ve been to in the last year or so,” he said.
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#1. To: Brian S (#0)
Hey, dummy... it's not a "rebound," it's called "dead-cat bounce." Get real.
Getting tired of the bozoed calcon following me around on the 'net, wanting to discuss "tossing salad." Sorry, you sick rump-ranger. NOT interested.
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