Motor City Renaissance: Detroit’s Talent Transformation in the Automotive Sector

Lightcast
Oct. 13, 2024
Ashley Peterson

The automotive industry in the United States is undergoing a profound transformation, driven by rapid advancements in technology, shifts in consumer preferences, and a push towards sustainability. These trends are not only reshaping the way vehicles are designed, manufactured, and sold, but are also creating new demand for talent and skills across the sector. As electric vehicles, autonomous driving, and connected car technologies become more prevalent, the industry faces a growing need for individuals with expertise in areas like software development, cybersecurity, and data analysis.

The Detroit, Michigan region, known as “Motor City”, has perhaps the longest and most storied history in the US automotive sector and is home to many of the largest, most innovative automotive companies. As technology in this sector continues to evolve, the Detroit region is once again organizing to create a future, building on its legacy of industrial innovation, to ensure that the next chapter is characterized by growth and opportunity that rivals that of prior eras.

Achieving this vision requires an approach that is at once focused and far-reaching. The Detroit area is fortunate to have developed a collection of education and training providers that reaches every corner of the region. The distributed nature of the region’s Community Colleges allows its institutions to serve a diverse current and potential workforce. However, it also makes it challenging to coordinate and align messaging, instruction, and learner support. Additionally, the distributed nature of the system makes it difficult to balance the needs of individual learners and employers with the needs of the broader innovation community that designs, produces, and supplies the Advanced Mobility sector. Fortunately, the Detroit Regional Chamber serves as a force to knit together these diverse and distributed educational assets – bringing focus and cohesion to the region’s talent strategy.

Creating a Custom Sector Definition to Inform Strategy and Drive Decisions

With strong coordination across such a formidable network, the Detroit Regional Chamber, its MichAuto program, and community college partners have the infrastructure, the means, and the will to create a truly regional education and training ecosystem. However, such a robust ecosystem requires equally robust data-backed insight to guide and inform its efforts. Lightcast is pleased to collaborate with the Detroit Regional Chamber and its partners by providing that insight, helping them to develop a future-ready workforce capable of meeting the Advanced Mobility sector’s evolving needs.

For example, regional stakeholders needed a single dataset to provide a shared understanding of challenges and opportunities facing the Advanced Mobility sector in and around Detroit. The Lightcast team worked with the Detroit Regional Chamber to develop a custom definition of the Advanced Mobility sector that includes skills and employers from traditional definitions of the Automotive sector, as well as skills and employers from emerging sub-sectors, like electric vehicles, autonomous vehicles, relevant supply chains, R&D, and support industries. Lightcast then used this custom definition to provide the chamber with a clearer understanding of sector-specific talent gaps in the region. In turn, this analysis will inform future investments in education, workforce, development, work-based learning, and credentialing.

Key Findings and Skill-Based Insights for Detroit’s Advanced Mobility Sector

As the sector continues to shift from traditional internal combustion engine vehicles to electric and autonomous vehicles, software and computer occupations and related technical skills are becoming increasingly important. Lightcast analysis found that with the Detroit region’s rich history in the automotive sector, there is already an abundance of skills that are present in the regional workforce and can be leveraged to support future growth in the Advanced Mobility sector. By building on the skills and experience of current workers in the automotive industry and adjacent industries, the Advanced Mobility sector can quickly get workers up to speed as talent needs continue to evolve. The chart below shows the Advanced Mobility sector skills that are in-demand and more concentrated in the Detroit workforce than the US average.

Lightcast also found that the Detroit region’s Advanced Mobility sector has opportunities available for individuals at all education levels and across a variety of disciplines – from a high school diploma to a Bachelor’s degree or above, from production to engineering, from quality assurance to IT, and data. While more experienced engineering occupations are in high demand, there are also a variety of great entry-level occupations that are in-demand and pay a living wage.

These opportunities can be promoted to students and new entrants to the workforce, as well as to those individuals already working in the sector who may be able to move into these better-paying occupations with minimal upskilling/reskilling. The top skills and certifications requested by Advanced Mobility employers across entry-level occupations are shown below.

While it is important to help young people embark upon a learning pathway that leads to high-quality jobs in the Advanced Mobility sector, the fastest and most efficient route to a properly skilled workforce is to draw on workers with similar skill sets, and to further develop Advanced Mobility-specific skills. To that end, Lightcast’s analysis looked at a variety of sector-relevant occupations and identified several lower-wage, occupations whose skills lend themselves to Advanced Mobility roles (“Feeder” occupations), and several occupations into which workers in those roles can advance (“Next Step” occupations). The graphic below shows the relationship between these occupations and transitions.