Center for Automotive Research Predicts Sharp Gain in Auto Jobs

DETROIT — Employment in the auto industry will return to prerecession levels by 2015, with carmakers and their suppliers adding about 167,000 jobs by then, according to estimates by an auto industry research firm.

The job growth would represent a 28 percent increase over current levels but would still replace only about a third of the jobs lost in the last decade. And much of the increase is made possible by labor agreements ratified this fall that allow the Detroit automakers to hire more workers on the lower of their two pay scales.

The industry group, the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich., said it expected the Detroit automakers to hire 14,750 hourly employees in the next four years. They would receive entry-level wages of $16 to $19 an hour. Workers hired before 2007 earn about $29 an hour.

The group projected that about 15 percent of the new jobs would be at Detroit automakers, and nearly 80 percent would be at suppliers. Foreign automakers would account for the rest.

Sean McAlinden, the group’s chief economist, said that about one in six hourly workers at the three Detroit companies would be earning entry-level wages in 2015. They will account for 23 percent of hourly workers at Chrysler, 17 percent at General Motors and 12 percent at Ford, he said.

Currently, about 5 percent of hourly workers at the three automakers are paid entry-level wages.

Mr. McAlinden said that he expected the companies eventually to stop using a two-tier wage system but that it would most likely survive past their next contract negotiations with the United Automobile Workers union, in 2015. Chrysler’s chief executive, Sergio Marchionne, unsuccessfully pushed to eliminate the system during this year’s negotiations, though he said he did not propose cutting wages for any existing workers.

The two-tier system was created in 2007 to help the automakers cut labor costs as they were hemorrhaging money, but only recently were they able to begin hiring new workers in large enough numbers for the savings to have a noticeable effect on the bottom line.

“This was the only real option for lowering labor costs and increasing employment,” said Kristin Dziczek, director for the labor and industry group at the Center for Automotive Research.

The automakers have said the new contracts would result in a minimal increase to their labor costs, which was their overarching goal during the negotiations, while the union tried to recover some of the concessions it had given up in recent years.

Mr. McAlinden estimated that the new contracts would add $114, or 8 percent, to the companies’ average per-vehicle labor costs by 2015. The increases range from $85 a vehicle at G.M. to $166 at Chrysler, though Chrysler’s per-vehicle labor costs would remain the lowest of the three, at $1,293.

About 590,000 people now work in the auto industry, 13 percent more than in July 2009, when G.M. emerged from bankruptcy, Ms. Dziczek said. That figure is expected to grow to 756,800 in 2015.

Much of the job growth will happen in Michigan, where the three Detroit automakers cut more than half of their jobs since 2001, she said.

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