As the auto industry goes, so goes the economy? From Wolf Richter at wolfstreet.com:
GM cuts entire shift at factory for crossovers due to “moderating” sales, layoffs not temporary.
For the first eight months of the year, car sales by GM and Ford plunged 19%. Industry car sales fell 11%, despite record incentives. Sales of trucks – pickups, SUVs, crossovers, and vans – have been the big hope. Total truck sales are up 3% for the year, reducing the overall sales decline to 3%. Particularly crossovers have been red-hot. Every manufacturer has jumped into this booming segment. They’ve been the big hope. But now, even that hope is fading.
“Although crossovers now make up a larger share of the automotive industry, overall volumes are moderating,” General Motors told employees in a layoff notice at its Spring Hill, Tenn., assembly plant that makes the GMC Acadia and Cadillac XT5. These crossover models are among the very vehicles GM is counting on to pull it out of its sales funk.
“We believe the best way to react…is to reduce output,” the statement said.
GM will eliminate an entire overnight shift with about 1,000 workers. Some of the workers might be transferred to the engine or component manufacturing side of the plant, according to the GM spokesman.
The notice was sent on Friday. It was meticulously timed. By the time it was reported by the Wall Street Journal, the markets had already closed and no one was supposed to pay attention any longer.
Already in December 2016, GM announced that it would kick-start 2017 by temporarily closing five assembly plants, temporarily laying off 10,000 workers. But most of those employees were involved in making cars.
What GM told its employees on Friday was different: It would cut an entire shift, it would not be temporary, and the purpose would be to cut production of formerly hot crossovers.
Every automaker is pursuing the hot crossover segment with a vengeance. They’re still selling, but not as well as expected, and demand is “moderating,” as GM put it, and now overcapacity is setting in, the bane in auto manufacturing. It has been hounding plants that make cars. But now the problem is spreading the plants that make crossovers.
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