“When we look closely at what’s happening at the plant, it’s not going to be fewer workers,” Keith Cooley, former head of the Michigan Department of Labor, told CNBC. “There will be different people building the cars.” Researchers believe that modern factory jobs will require more training and could be less available than in the past. They estimate that electric vehicles could require 30% less labor to manufacture compared to conventional cars. “The lines that run to drive oil or natural gas around an internal combustion engine are not going to be there,” Cooley said. That change could hurt auto parts suppliers, many of which are clustered near Midwestern cities like Kokomo, Indiana. Lima, Ohio? and Detroit, Michigan. “The auto companies in some of these places actually make up a decent percentage of the tax revenue and employ a lot of people in the surrounding community,” Sanya Carley, an Indiana University professor and co-author of the Industrial Heartland study, told CNBC. “So the fate of these companies is very closely tied to the fate of communities.” Leaders in Washington hope that two key bills, the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS Act, signed into law by President Joe Biden in August, will provide a bridge to that future. These laws allow billions in incentives for businesses pursuing clean energy production. With funding in place, automakers are now wondering how quickly demand for electric vehicles will materialize. In 2021, 9% of global car sales were electric vehicles, according to the International Energy Agency. Watch the video to learn more about how the electric vehicle revolution will affect the economies of states across the American Midwest.
