With the ratification of the last of their new four-year agreements with the United Automobile Workers union on Wednesday, the Detroit car companies have successfully held the line on costs and further closed the competitive gap with their foreign rivals.

It was one of the cheapest set of contracts ever negotiated by the companies, analysts said. Historically, new union contracts have meant annual increases in labor costs in this country of 5 percent or more. But the 2011 talks resulted in a much more manageable increase of about 1 percent a year.

“I think both the union and the company came to a good place, common ground,” Daniel F. Akerson, General Motors’ chief executive, said in an interview. “Both of us can say we did well for our constituencies.”

It took three months of intense negotiations, which culminated in more opposition than normal by union members at General Motors, Ford and Chrysler. But in the end, Detroit won favorable contracts that not only keep costs down, but also allow the companies to increase production and employment in their United States factories.

By avoiding wage increases for their longtime workers, the automakers have minimized the longer-term, structural cost increases that had characterized its contracts with the U.A.W. for years.

The companies did reward workers with healthy signing bonuses, better profit-sharing formulas, and pay increases for the growing ranks of entry-level workers. In addition, all three companies pledged to add thousands of new jobs over the life of the contracts.

Yet the overall low cost of the agreements reflected the tenuous nature of the industry’s comeback.

“You can’t discount the fact that these companies are shadows of their former selves,” said Kristin Dziczek, a labor analyst with the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich. “The industry is smaller and leaner than at any time in many years.”

G.M., Ford and Chrysler employed more than 300,000 hourly workers in the United States in 2001. That figure has dwindled to 112,000, and a small but growing fraction of those jobs are entry-level positions.

By reducing jobs and factories to better match their market shares, the Detroit companies have drastically reduced the level of industry sales at which they can break even.

Now as they add new products, they can also begin the hiring of thousands of new, less expensive lower-tier workers. The combination of less costly workers and steadily growing sales should produce higher profits over the course of the contracts.

Mr. Akerson, who joined G.M. after its bankruptcy in 2009, expressed confidence that his company could cover the modest increase in costs with better productivity and more profitable vehicles in its lineup.

“I think it is well within our capacity to, in terms of productivity gains and our ability to raise prices,” he said. “The contract maintained our break-even point, which was critical.”

Several factors contributed to the positive outcome, including new leadership at G.M. and Chrysler and a new president, Bob King, at the union. From the start of negotiations, there was an emphasis on compromise rather than confrontation, and little expectation that the automakers would increase wages for veteran workers.

Instead, Mr. King concentrated on getting sizable cash bonuses for workers now and a bigger share of corporate profits for them in the future.

The union also treated each company differently, based on its current financial condition.

Ford, which did not need a government bailout, was pressed to hand out the largest signing bonuses, $6,000 a worker. G.M. agreed to pay $5,000 and Chrysler consented to $3,500, although only half of that will be paid this year.

Mr. King and other union leaders had a tough time persuading some union members to support the disparity in bonuses. While workers at G.M. and Ford approved their new deals by votes of about 2 to 1, only 55 percent of Chrysler employees voted in favor of their new contract.

Workers were predictably split on whether the new agreements were fair.

“Is everybody happy with it? No,” Mr. King said in a conference call with reporters on Wednesday. “I’m not happy either. We know the struggles our members are going through.”

Mr. King said it was important, however, that the new contracts did not wipe out the competitive gains the companies had achieved through restructuring.

Analysts estimated that the three automakers were able to shrink the gap between what Detroit paid its workers and the compensation of nonunion employees at plants operated by foreign automakers in the United States.

The American companies now pay workers $57 to $50 an hour, when the cost of pensions and health care coverage is included. Ford, which has the fewest entry-level employees, is at the high end of the range, while Chrysler’s costs are the lowest.

By comparison, labor costs at the foreign-owned plants are still below $50 an hour on average.

“But the gap has closed considerably,” Ms. Dziczek said. “It used to be close to $30 an hour, and now it’s less than $10.”

The new contracts also symbolically moved the industry past its darkest chapter, when G.M. and Chrysler were forced to seek federal aid to survive.

At Ford, the negotiations were crucial to re-establishing parity with G.M., which emerged from bankruptcy with far less debt than its crosstown rival.

“We worked out something with the U.A.W. that did not disadvantage us to G.M.,” said John Fleming, Ford’s head of global manufacturing. “We always knew we’d have to pay our workers a little bit more to ratify it.”

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