Without looking at the numbers, gross profit is before expenditures, so it’s not like Ford has 24 billion in surplus money.
“I assume that there is some cooking of the books”
Or maybe there is stronger competition and profit margins have fallen?
Their net profits have fallen considerably since 2021 but that can be attributed to the chip shortage. I chose gross profit because you take the 40% increase for the 57,000 hourly ford employees making on average $19/hr and you’d end up reducing their gross profit by $900 million. That’s a large amount of money but in general would only be around 25% of their net profit (going off pre COVID numbers) annually. Those same workers would then be able to afford the vehicles they’re building day in and day out. As it stands $19 an hour is just $39,520 a year which means it’s not likely they can afford a new car that they themselves are building.
Edit: Looks like their heaviest expenditures lately were factory overhauls for redesigned F-150 pickups thus causing their net profit losses.
