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The aging vehicle trend and relatively slow sales have kept auto companies and parts makers from hiring new workers in great numbers, and that helps to hold unemployment at relatively high levels. Last month, the unemployment rate fell to 8.5 percent
-- still high, but the lowest level in three years. But that started to change last year as sales started to rebound. Last January, Ford said it would hire 7,000 workers over the next two years. During the summer, GM said it would add 2,500 at the Detroit factory that makes the Chevrolet Volt electric car. Volkswagen hired 2,000 for a new plant in Tennessee, and Honda added 1,000 in Indiana. Just last week Chrysler announced plans to add 1,250 jobs at two Detroit factories next year, mainly to build a diesel version of the Jeep Grand Cherokee. The industry will add 167,000 jobs by 2015, a 28 percent increase over current levels, predicts The Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich. Government estimates show Americans spent roughly $40 billion more on new cars and trucks in 2011 than in 2009. Based on annualized figures from the first quarter of 2011, new-car spending totaled $206 billion, or 1.3 percent of the gross domestic product, Commerce Department data shows. That compares with $166 billion in 2009, about 1.2 percent of the country's economy. Polk said the average age of a car in the U.S. last year was 11.1 years, while the average truck was 10.4 years old. In 2010, the average age of a car was 11 and the average truck was 10.1 years old.
[Associated
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