Ford turns to apprenticeships to fix tech shortage
Ford CEO Jim Farley got everyone's attention with his admission of Ford's technician hiring issues late last year: they had 5,000 open technician jobs paying $120,000 a year. The reality of that many jobs paying that much money being open is up for debate, but the point is Ford is not confident it can reliably staff its bays in the coming years unless something changes.
They aren't alone. Fleet and shops routinly place tech hiring as a top concern. On the auto side, the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) projects the U.S. needs to add about 76,000 technicians annually to meet service demand across dealerships and service operations. The main issue is that experienced workers are retiring or leaving the trade faster than new ones enter.
To help close that gap, Ford announced it will be among the first manufacturers to implement NADA’s new dealership apprenticeship program, designed to help service departments grow technicians internally using an earn-and-learn model. The program was developed with the ASE Educational Foundation, which establishes training and certification standards for the industry.
The initiative allows participating dealers to create structured, in-house apprenticeship tracks rather than relying solely on external hiring.
The program has been approved by the U.S. Department of Labor as a registered apprenticeship, a designation that can make participating dealers eligible for certain state tax credits and potential federal funding. The agency is also planning to invest an additional $145 million to grow registered apprenticeship programs across multiple industries.
"Apprentices complete 18 to 24 months of training, earning more than 2,000 hours of hands-on experience and about 400 hours of classroom instruction," explained Daniel Justo, VP of Ford Customer Service Division. "The curriculum spans internal combustion and electric vehicles, reflecting how modern technicians must combine mechanical, electrical, and diagnostic skill sets."
Ford plans to roll the program out to dealers across the U.S. in late February, beginning with technical placement specialists who support recruiting and development at the store level.
