GM is employeen a total of 3 million people, either directly or indirectly. Even in a short-term would this mean that all those 3 million would loose their jobs. No, that would be impossible.
Let's look where the workers work:
504,500 Parts
864,100 Repair
340,100 Wholesale
1,187,200 Dealers
114,700 Manufacturing
(Source: WSJ 11/14/08 p.A8)
- There would still be a big demand for GM parts, of course it would face massive labour cuts
- Still, people need to repair their old GM cars
- Wholesale will face heaviest loses
- Dealers will have to cut labour as well'
- Repair, Parts, Dealers can all find new customers from Toyota, Honda, MB, BMW etc... of course for a while it will be difficult for them. But if there is a demand for cars in US then they certainly will have jobs or atleast someone will be the retailer and maintenance
- Manufacturing is the only actual segment which will be totally gone until the markets are free from government influence and someone like Renault etc. will buy them for cheap
--> So, the actual short-term job losses will be very small compared to the mainstream medias 1-3 million. And if they are not low then it would mean that the losses would become evident even with government influence. And GM is already cutting jobs...
- In the best scenario GM would go bankrupt. Japanese manufactors will increase their market share and they will buy some good entities of GM. Also, retailers would start to sell Honda, Toyota etc. Some parts and brands of GM would be bought by small investors or inventors who would start "the concept of an American car" from beginning. It has already been seen that small time players can create future cars. Many of hybrid cars are not created by big time players but small players like Fisker Automotive who is creating a sports hybrid.
- Maybe in the future American cars are known from their high quality and ecofriendly style. Maybe in 20 years people dont even remember big gas hungry Hummers etc.