DETROIT – Between General Motors' announcement of massive cuts and possible plant closings, presidential tweets and UAW concerns about its members' future, there's a major trend that's reared its worrisome head.
The auto industry is looking to make it's manufacturing ranks much smaller and that could change the economic landscape of Michigan and Detroit.
The employment picture that's fueled the economy for a century is about to change even more dramatically than we've seen over the past generation because of the new technology the industry is chasing.
Factory floors are seeing infinitely fewer workers. The Center for Automotive Research said before the bankruptcies, the auto industry had a 75 to 25 percent line worker to white-collar counterpart. Now it's 50 to 50 percent and they will soon flip, according to analyst Kristen Dziczek.
"There is not very much of that electric supply chain that is there. The big touch screens essentially installed in their cars largely coming from Asia," Dziczek said.
The reality is an electric car has about ten moving parts, a small percentage of the hundreds of moving parts in an internal combustion-powered car. This could mean manufacturing processes are pared back dramatically, requiring fewer workers.
"I don't think we're going to start teleporting anytime soon and most of these future technologies we'll be rolling around on four wheels. They might not have a driver and they might be driven by a battery, but that box rolling on four wheels is part of our future for the foreseeable time," Dziczek said.