Ford Motor Co. plans to add “more than 7,000 workers in the U.S. over the next two years,” the Associated Press writes.

According to The Detroit News, “that includes 4,000 blue-collar jobs and 750 salaried positions in 2011, plus another 2,500 factory jobs in 2012” and is “fresh evidence of the U.S. auto industry’s recovery.

The Detroit Free Press notes that “Ford has announced 1,800 jobs for [its] Louisville plant, where the Ford Escape SUV is built, and about 1,000 jobs to build the Ford Explorer at the company’s Chicago assembly plant.”

As Morning Edition has reported, “U.S. automakers had a strong finish to 2010. December sales were up for every car company except Toyota. The good news has automakers revising their 2011 forecasts up.”

Ford also announced that it is “recruiting salaried engineers specializing in batteries, system controls, software and energy storage to work on electric vehicles in Detroit and eight other cities including Boston; Chicago; Cincinnati; Columbus, Ohio; Milwaukee; Raleigh and Durham, N.C.; and San Jose, Calif.” Copyright 2011 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.