Yea right, just U.S. Department of Labor stats, not mine.
Yeah, right, just show me the link.
You won't find one. I know it's been reported a lot in the press and other places, but those reporting it didn't do their homework, either. That neat and pretty 1 in 10 number did not come from the US Labor Department, it came from a 2003 study by
Center for Automotive Research on the
“Economic contributions of the motor vehicle to the U.S. economy, to a multitude of U.S. industries in retail, manufacturing and service sectors, and to individual Americans.”
The
Center for Automotive Research is a nonprofit research organization with ties to labor and government. The study was commissioned by the
Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers.
Big Three CEO's, UAW members, and others, like to misuse (or even unintentionally misuse) the number to mean, just as you said, the industry and its related suppliers comprise 10% of American jobs, but that's not what they study actually shows.
The study concludes that
“new vehicle production sales, and other jobs related to the use of automobiles are responsible for one out of every 10 jobs in the U.S economy.” There's a difference betwen "responsible for" and "employs". People read that conclusion, then stopped reading, and didn't bother to look at the actual data. The term “responsible for” covers jobs in steel, glass and electronics as well as those in taxi-driving, travel and advertising companies, among others.
In addtion, the study used data from 1998 to 2001, and the industry has changed significantly since then. Employment in the motor vehicles and parts-manufacturing sector has fallen quite a bit in the time since. Plus, the "auto-related jobs" covered in the report include more than those dependent on the Detroit automakers - they are related to cars sold by
any manufacturer in the American market, whether it is actually manufactured here or not.
In other words, if GM goes down the tubes, the entire car wash industy won't go down with it.
If you're going to use the neat and pretty 1 in 10 number, you have to use more precise wording. You could state that 1 in 10 jobs in the US are
tied to the auto industry, and it would be an accurate statement, even if slighly misleading. But when you state the, "auto industry and related suppliers
employ almost 1 in 10 workers," that's just untrue.
Since that initial study, the Center had done additional studies, one of which was released on Election Day. It was a study to figure out just what kind of ripple effect (jobs,
tax revenue, compensation, etc.) we would see if the Big Three go down. They study was done under two set of cirmstances (bailout and no bailout) and in both cases, there would be significant short-term shocks to employment, leading to direct and indirect job losses of somewhere between 2.5 million to 3 million in 2009. (that's not even close to 1 in 10 jobs, by the way)
The study went further to extrapolate how many of those jobs would be recovered, and when. Again, two sets of circumstances, one of which is where the existing foreign automakers would expand production here in the US, and the other is that overseas production would be expanded due to the cheaper labor costs. The study showed between 40 and 59 percent of those jobs would be recovered by 2011, and did not extrapolate the data out any further than that.
Crappy cars? I have NEVER had one yet that I did not put AT LEAST 150,000 miles on. My 1990 Chevy pick-up had 294,856 miles on it and it STILL had the original engine and tranny.
Yeah, crappy cars. And I'm a Chevy guy through and through. My first non-Chevy personal vehicle was just 6 years go. My stepdad is a Ford guy. Poor misguided man.
But as much of a Chevy guy that I am, they're cheaply built. You know, crappy.
Your very freedom came from Detroit, the Arsenal of Democracy. You would be goose stepping and using chopsticks if it wernt for industries in this city.
To a degree, true, but that's also a chicken and egg thing. We had the auto plants in Detroit, so we used them. If we didn't have Detroit, we'd have come up with some other option. It's quite impossible to say that if we didn't have the Big Three and Detroit at the time of WWII that we would have lost, because you don't know what the other options might have been. Detroit was simple quick and easy.
In any case, I'm glad they were there, not that any of them decided to be there in case of a war. But mainly because at 51 years old I still cannot to this day use chopsticks.
I don't dispute that they have not always been right at what they did and that changes are needed, BUT, is congress the ones who should dictate that ? They are even worse!!! As bad as they can be they are better then Toyota, let them build our military. Layoutshooter
No, Congress shouldn't be dictating how the automakers make their changes. On the other hand, if Congress is gonna give them a snotload of money, they have every right, a duty, to find out how wisely the money will be spent, as that goes directly to the viability of them getting paid back. Without major changes, Congress would be throwing good money after bad.
