Serious shortage of skilled auto mechanics looming

LOS ANGELES -- Jonathan Hernandez figures if he is going to drive, he had better know how to fix cars. And he's well on his way to earning his degree in auto repair from Los Angeles Trade Technical College.

But the 23-year-old does not intend to put his community college credential to use as a career. He plans instead to become a tattoo artist.

"I can do a tattoo in three hours and make $300," explains Hernandez, who says he isn't tattooed himself. "Tattoo money is a little easier."

Such are the challenges for auto dealers and repair shops looking to recruit the repair technicians of tomorrow. A generation who grew up playing Xbox games instead of rebuilding carburetors doesn't seem to have the fascination with auto repair as earlier generations who grew up as shade-tree mechanics.

There is already competition among auto dealers in many parts of the nation to hire or retain good technicians. The bigger worry is whether there will be enough younger workers in a few years as a wave of midcareer mechanics hits retirement age.

"We're finding we're going to run short of technicians in the very near future," says Rich Orbain, manager for General Motors' Service Technical College. "It's already getting very difficult to get young people interested in this as a career."

Auto-repair educators say they are fighting misconceptions about the profession. They point out that fixing cars has gone high-tech. A laptop computer is becoming as important a repair tool as a set of socket wrenches. And, in a world of job uncertainty, auto repair remains a career largely impervious to being outsourced abroad.

The nation's demand for auto mechanics is expected to have grown about 17% from 2010 to 2020, adding 124,800 jobs for a total of 848,200, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports. Auto technicians overall earned an average of $35,790, but 10% earned more than $59,590, in 2010, the most recent year for which the BLS has data.

Wanted: Master mechanics

While high school graduates can land basic maintenance jobs such as changing engine oil, the real need will be for more highly trained technicians.

It's those at the top of the profession that the industry is most concerned about losing, the master mechanics who don't just read troubleshooting data off a computer screen, but rather put their education and experience to use to interpret clues and pinpoint a problem.

Faced with complexities of today's cars, master mechanics are being asked to deal with issues that would have required an engineering degree in the past. That problem is being compounded by the multiple new powertrain technologies hitting the market, including hybrids, electrics and advanced clean-diesel engines.

"You have paralegals and paramedics. You're getting to the point in (auto repair) that you are going to have para-engineers," says Frank Diertl, general manager of engineering services for Mercedes-Benz in the U.S.

While in the past fixing cars was more about mechanical aptitude, electronics and computer-controlled systems rule today. A typical car may have 20 or more microprocessors working together, each running software with thousands of lines of code to control vital systems, whether it's anti-lock brakes or the infotainment system.