Ford Motor Company employee count 2004 through 2008

One of the largest sources of unemployed workers in the last 4 years has been the auto industry. If you look at Ford Motor Company's employee headcount, you'll see that it has fallen from ~300,000 employees in 2005 to 213,000 at the end of 2008. That's a decrease of over 29% in 3 years. And it also trickles into the supplier base, and dealer base as well. (One item to note, 16,000 jobs removed from Ford in 2008 represent employees associated with Jaguar and Land Rover which were sold off in the second half of 2008)---Ignoring those 16k employees, employment at ford dropped ~24% from 2005 to 2008.

Click for a Larger Image

If you look at where those workforce changes have come from, you'll find that a few business units have actually grown their employee base since 2004. Specifically, Ford of South America has grown from 12 thousand strong to 15 thousand, and Ford of Europe has grown its workforce by 1%. (Again, if you look at the Ford Employee Count for their Premier Automotive Group (PAG) in 2004 of 51,000 employees and compare it to the year end figure of 24,000 in 2008, you have to realize that 16,000 Jaguar & Land Rover employees were removed via the sale of the brand.

Click for a Larger Image

Overall, Ford has dropped 28% of its workforce since 2004---With the Premier Automotive Group (PAG--The luxury car group) dropping by 53%, and Ford Credit dropping by 44%, and Ford North America down by 57 thousand people, or a 37% drop.

What I found most surprising is that if you ignore the 16k Jaguar and Land Rover employees who were cut due to asset sale (i.e. are working for a new company), Ford Motor Company only cut employee headcount by 7% in 2008, while US Industry Sales dropped ~18% at the same time (16.5million units in 2007 vs. 13.5 million units in 2008)

Source: Ford Motor Company 10-K filings and Investor Presentations & http://unemploymentadvice.blogspot.com analysis.