General Motors will announce a new round of plant investments today at its Pontiac Metal Center just as an independent report found the company's U.S. manufacturing employment reached its highest level last year since the 2009 bankruptcy, the Detroit Free Press reported today. This week local officials in Arlington, Tex., voted on incentives for a $1.2 billion expansion of the assembly plant that produces the Cadillac Escalade, Chevrolet Tahoe and Suburban and GMC Yukon. A study by the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich., yesterday found that GM's total hourly and salaried employment in the U.S. rose to about 78,000 last year, up from 74,000 at the end of 2010, but still 15 percent below the 91,655 at the end of 2008, just as the financial crisis forced the federal government to aid GM and Chrysler.
