Listener Roger Kerr and many others want to know what is at stake in a potential bailout of the Big Three automakers. Specifically, Kerr wants to know:

How many employees of those companies, of their suppliers, and of all the other businesses which would be affected downstream, will lose their jobs as a result?

It's not an easy number to get at, but here's our best attempt.

Ford, Chrysler and General Motors employ about 250,000 people in the U.S. at last count. That's down from more than a half million a decade ago.

On top of that, there are a lot of other jobs that depend on Detroit. The Big Three spend about $300 billion a year on equipment, supplies, tooling and parts ranging from transmissions to shop rags.

Consider Ford's F-150. Sales of the once hugely-popular truck have fallen 25% this year, one of the big reasons the company's balance sheet is so anemic right now. All told, each truck contains 4,350 parts, made by 270 suppliers in 26 states as well as several foreign countries. Every F-150 that doesn't sell hits literally hundreds of thousands of people.

According to the Original Equipment Suppliers Assn., a trade group for the roughly 5,000 U.S. supply makers, more than 100,000 jobs have been shed in the last two years as car makers order increasingly fewer parts. Conservatively, hundreds of thousands of more jobs are at risk.

According to a study by advisory firm BBK, 17% of suppliers were at risk of bankruptcy at the outset of 2008, and that number is expected to have grown in recent months.

One important point: it's not clear what foreign auto companies would do if the Big Three go belly up. It's expected they would significantly ramp up production in the U.S. adding jobs directly and indirectly via auto supply makers. The problem is, no one can say how many jobs that would be before one or more U.S. automakers file for bankruptcy and restructure themselves.

categories: Questions from You

1:35 - November 19, 2008

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