Wall Street Analyst: Ford Could Cut 25,000 Jobs

General Motors has already announced that they will be closing plants and laying people off, but Ford’s restructuring could be even more disastrous to workers. According to some Wall Street analysts, we can expect Ford to lay off about 25,000 people, and soon.

Ford had announced plans last summer to restructure their business, to the tune of $11 billion.  But that restructuring may not include 24,000 workers currently employed by the vehicle manufacturer.  Like GM, Ford is reinventing itself to compete in an industry undergoing radical change, according to a report by CNN. Both GM and Ford have said they need to cut costs to invest in the next generation of vehicles, such as self-driving and electric cars in order to stay profitable. So the loss of jobs is all but inevitable.

“There are bigger forces at work driving global [automakers] to rethink the fundamental idea of supporting increasingly obsolete segments, propulsion systems, and geographic regions,” Adam Jonas,  the auto analyst at Morgan Stanley wrote in a research note. Ford did say that the actions the company intends to take will largely take place outside of North America, however, Jonas states that plants in America and workers won’t be spared.

Ford’s sales in the United States are down about 3% this year. Similarly to GM, the company has announced plans to stop selling traditional sedans in North America other than its iconic Mustang, given the shift in customer preference towards SUVs and pickups.

GM Will Cut 14,000 Jobs and Idle Plants As Sales Slump

Ford said last week that it would need to cut some shifts and 1,150 hourly jobs at two plants, one in Kentucky, one in Michigan. But it also announced it was adding 1,000 jobs at two other nearby plants, and said that all hourly workers whose current jobs were being eliminated would be offered jobs at another Ford plant. The company had 202,000 workers worldwide at the end of last year, with about half of those in North America and 54,000 in Europe.

This article has been contributed by SHTF Plan. Visit www.SHTFplan.com for alternative news, commentary and preparedness info.