According to an article in the Star-Telegram, General Motors is already moving forward to close 1,200 car dealerships nationwide and some of those may include dealerships located in Dallas-Fort Worth.
The article said:
GM has 15 individual dealership locations in Tarrant County, including the three Saturn of DFW stores. There are six Chevrolet outlets, as well as three Cadillac and three Buick-Pontiac-GMC locations. Hummer outlets are co-located with Classic Chevrolet in Grapevine and Frank Kent Buick-Pontiac-GMC in Fort Worth, while Sewell Cadillac-Saab in Grapevine is the only Saab outlet. GM has not provided local managers with either a list of dealerships targeted or a set of criteria for judging which ones it wants to keep, said Craig Eppling, a spokesman at the company’s Irving office.
GM expects to lose 500 Hummer and Saturn dealerships and has already announced that it will eliminate its Pontiac brand, so the likelihood of Dallas-Fort Worth dealerships being closed is high. The closure of these dealerships will add to the number of job losses in Dallas-Fort Worth and may even increase the number of unemployed here facing foreclosure and seeking debt relief in bankruptcy. But the loss of these dealerships will have a wider impact, causing job losses in other companies that depend on business from the dealerships and their workers.
We can expect the length of unemployment to be extended for these workers because the job market is already extremely saturated with unemployed workers, some of whom faced job losses dating back to 2007. Our state leaders need to be prepared to handle the rising number of unemployed in this state by making sure that workers have access to unemployment insurance for the duration of their job search. Without an income from unemployment insurance, many of these unemployed workers will face foreclosure or even complete destitution.