Stellantis NV employment grew last year for the first time in the carmaker's history as it added more than 10,000 jobs worldwide, with 4,700 of those in North America, newly released corporate filings show.

The company had methodically cut costs in the years after its 2021 formation, as former CEO Carlos Tavares oversaw a nearly 50,000-employee reduction globally through 2024.

Now, under CEO Antonio Filosa, who took over last year, that trend is turning around. Total company employment at the end of last year surged to 258,668, similar to 2023 levels. Total U.S. headcount grew by about 400.

More hiring is coming, including at the Jeep and Ram maker's Auburn Hills headquarters and tech center. The sprawling facility bustled with activity again in recent months amid the recent hiring push and after workers were ordered back in the office five days per week.

“The tech center has come back to life," said Glenn Stevens, executive director of MichAuto, the automotive arm of the Detroit Regional Chamber.

He was in the building last week and noticed full parking lots — a far cry from one visit more than a year ago, when he was "stunned" by how few people were inside.

The company's total employment in Oakland County, where the regional headquarters is situated, increased significantly last year, Stellantis spokesperson Jodi Tinson said, though she declined to provide an exact number. The company is actively listing about 400 open jobs based in Auburn Hills, its website shows, with more than 600 total openings in the United States.

Filosa, who is based in Michigan, has recently touted a push to hire 2,000 engineers to help drive quality improvements. The bulk of those positions is expected to be located in the United States. Tinson said that hiring push began last year and will extend into 2027.

The company is also planning to add 5,000 manufacturing workers in the United States over the next four years, part of a $13 billion domestic investment that involves developing and launching several new vehicles and filling underutilized plants. And Stellantis previously said it added 200 people to support sales, service and parts field operations across the country.

Filosa has prioritized fixing and investing in the North American market, saying the region is critical to the company's overall turnaround effort after sales and profits plummeted in recent years. That's in contrast to Tavares, who had shifted engineering to other lower-cost countries, slashed blue-collar workforces, and moved more of the company's leadership nucleus to Europe.

Tinson said the bulk of the company's nearly 4,700-worker North American hiring surge in 2025 occurred in Mexico, where it added a third shift at the Toluca Assembly Plant. The plant is ramping up production of the new Jeep Cherokee and also makes several other models. The company also added significant staff at its Saltillo Truck Assembly Plant, which is now producing Ram 1500 pickups along with the brand's heavy-duty truck offerings.

Other regional staffing increases took place in South America, which added about 6,000 positions and continues to be a rare sales success story for the company, as well as in the Middle East and Africa region. Stellantis' headcount in Europe notably declined by about 2,000, to 124,084, its lowest level since the merger that created Stellantis five years ago.

Michigan leaders and union officials had grown concerned in recent years that Stellantis was steadily downsizing in the state and might one day leave its regional headquarters in Auburn Hills. The facility was even tabbed for eventual closure during contract talks between the company and United Auto Workers in 2023.

Thomas Tanghe, the Auburn Hills city manager, noted in a December post that the building had looked like a "ghost town" in recent years, with staffing falling to around 1,200 — a far cry from the days when it housed a "city within a city," or about 15,000 workers a day. On a recent tour, he and other officials were told there were about 8,000 people back working in the building.

“The trend was not good," Stevens said of Stellantis' employment in the state. "It was very concerning to those of us who care about Stellantis as one of the hometown teams. The employees are our friends and neighbors, and they were feeling it. The path that the company was on, no one would argue that it was a good one. Leadership was attempting to cut its way to prosperity."

Now, the economic developer said he's watched the early stages of a strategic reset occur under Filosa. It's "not a full turnaround story at this point," Stevens said, as the automaker still struggles to put sales and profits on an upward trajectory again; UAW workers in the state didn't receive any profit sharing this year. Still, the "first few chapters are pretty promising."

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