Surprise! Carmakers Are a Recovery Bright Spot

Americans of all political stripes remain worried that the supply of good jobs in the U.S. has all but dried up. Not Karen Bowen. The 39-year-old single mother from Guntown, Miss., recently landed a job on a quality-assurance team at Toyota Motor’s new Corolla plant in nearby Blue Springs. The starting pay is $15 an hour—almost half what veteran autoworkers get in unionized carmaking strongholds such as Detroit or Louisville. Yet the salary is more than she earned at her previous job at a local chiropractor’s office, and it comes with a potent sweetener: benefits. Bowen now has health insurance and a retirement plan, plus the promise of job stability. That “means a better life for my family,” she says. “I aim to work here until I retire.”

Car companies are hiring, and they’ve become one of the bright spots in the sluggish U.S. recovery. Domestic and international automakers plan to hire or rehire at least 25,000 workers between now and 2015. That includes 4,000 in the fourth quarter of 2011 alone, spread among Toyota’s $1.3 billion Mississippi plant, a new assembly shift at Honda Motor’s Civic factory in Greensburg, Ind., a third shift at Kia Motors’ Georgia assembly plant, and an expansion at Hyundai Motor’s factory in Alabama.