Ford and JPMorgan Pledge $2 Billion as Trades Shortage Bites

Ford CEO Jim Farley and JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon have launched Michigan LIFT, a $2 billion public-private initiative under which Ford aspires to award up to $1 billion in contracts to participating suppliers over the next decade while the investment bank aspires to provide up to $1 billion in financing to those suppliers.

The announcement came one day before the Alliance for America's Skilled Trades — the corporate coalition formed this summer by Ford, BlackRock, Google and Carhartt — released its first major report. It finds that employers will need to fill about 1.7 million skilled-trades openings each year through 2035. More than 18 million people now work in the trades, contributing an estimated $3.8 trillion to U.S. GDP in 2025, according to the report, which cites Bureau of Labor Statistics and Bureau of Economic Analysis data.

Farley cast the effort in personal and national terms. His grandfather was a mechanic; his father grew up around cars.

"Skilled trades are the backbone of our country and American manufacturing, and the backbone of the American dream," Farley told media. "No one company is going to solve this alone. It's way too big of a problem."

The report rejects the idea of a single national shortage. Data centers, manufacturing plants, grid projects, housing construction and infrastructure investment create distinct labor pressures in different regions, while retirement, worker migration, training capacity and poor completion rates impose different constraints in each.

The demographics are stark. Nearly one-quarter of skilled-trades workers are 55 or older, compared with 11% younger than 25. Across measurable formal training pathways, the country prepares roughly 55 workers for every 100 needed. The authors caution that the figure excludes employer-led and on-the-job routes.

Shortage pressure varies sharply by trade. Industrial machinery mechanics, machinery maintenance workers and millwrights rank at the 98th percentile among 523 occupations measured. Electricians sit at the 85th percentile. Automotive technicians rank at the 54th.

Geography compounds the problem. Texas and North Carolina each gain about 5,000 trades workers annually on net through interstate migration. New York loses about 9,000 more than it gains. The largest single flow runs from California to Texas, at roughly 5,000 workers a year. Matt Sigelman, president of the Burning Glass Institute, which led the report's quantitative analysis, called the fast-growing states "essentially importing the workers that they're failing to train."

Completion, not just recruitment, is a bottleneck. Of every 100 people who start a skilled-trades apprenticeship, only 48 complete it, and 29 enter a trade occupation within five years of leaving, a Burning Glass Institute analysis found. In postsecondary programs, 48 of 100 complete and 34 ultimately work in a skilled trade. The two pathways draw on different data sources and are not directly comparable, the report says.

That gap threatens the training system itself. Experienced workers mentor apprentices, supervise jobsite learning and teach the next generation. If they retire or get pulled into immediate project work, training capacity shrinks.

The Alliance also announced the America's Skilled Trades Dashboard, a first-of-its-kind tool that consolidates scattered data on what Farley calls "the essential economy" into one place. The report recommends improving completion and placement outcomes, providing child care and transportation support for trainees, strengthening links from high-school career programs to apprenticeships, and planning workforce needs when large projects are announced — not after hiring becomes urgent.

Dimon pointed to Detroit's decade of revival as proof of the model, saying the city has shown "what is possible when business, government and community leaders work together for the long term." Michigan LIFT, he said, will connect customer demand, capital and public resources "so more companies can grow, more workers can participate and more critical capabilities can scale here in the United States."

Farley framed the argument against siloed responses. "It takes people breaking out of their silos," he said. "It takes large and small and medium-sized employers, educators, policymakers, local leaders, and politicians all actually working together."

"Ford is America's automaker," Farley said at the Michigan LIFT announcement, "and we believe American manufacturing's best days are ahead."