More on labor costs
I'm hearing a lot of people say that labor costs for the Big Three in the U.S. are higher than for other companies with workers in the U.S. because of the huge pool of current retirees.
This is not the case. Labor costs as given don't include the costs of current retirees, but they do include the costs of benefits promised to current employees.
Maybe this is good news...it implies that auto companies might be able to cut their labor costs quite a bit by modifying future benefits for current employees without having to reduce critical retirement benefits to retirees already dependent on them.