How Ford Pays

General Salary Grade ladder — GSR1 through GSR8

Leadership Level ladder — LL6 through LL3

Executive

Disclosed executive layer

Track divergence

Hierarchy qualifications and legacy structures

• Ford job postings identify General Salary Grades and Leadership Levels by number, but Ford has never published a global grade-to-title dictionary, so the title mapping in this report is an analytical normalisation and not a Ford promotion policy.
• The Leadership Level numbering runs downward, which catches out candidates moving from technology employers: LL6 is the first-line leadership entry point and LL1 is the top, the reverse of a P or L ladder that counts upward.
• Only three cells in the entire hierarchy carry a live Ford disclosure: the GSR4 and GSR5 ranges on a Dearborn instrumentation-technician posting, and the LL6 range on an engineering-manager posting with a separate California variant. Everything between GSR6 and LL4 is interpolated.
• The 2023 Long-Term Incentive Plan proposal is the single best public description of where Ford draws internal lines, because eligibility language is a hierarchy statement: grants expected for LL1 through LL5, certain LL6 and selected technology GSR roles, about 10,900 employees at the 2022 reference date, with performance share units expected only at LL1 through LL3.
• GSR1 through GSR4 are collapsed into one row because Ford discloses a range only at GSR4. The $38,000 to $94,900 span across those four grades is wider than the whole GSR5 range, so a single median at this row should be read as a placeholder rather than a benchmark.
• The chief executive and executive chair rows are carried in the executive section rather than in the band table, because they are two individuals in one city and multiplying them by a city factor would produce a meaningless local figure.

Peer-level mapping

Office and market catalogue — calibration factors versus Dearborn

Ford does not publish city-level headcount, so this catalogue does not rank sites by employee count. The only city-scale statement Ford makes is that Ford Business Solutions employs more than 12,000 people in India, and the only United States concentration statement is the general one about Dearborn and southeast Michigan.

Dearborn anchor medians — the basis of every modeled cell

• Dearborn is the anchor because it is the only market where Ford posts a salary range at more than one grade. GSR5 and LL6 medians are the midpoints of live postings; GSR6 through LL4 are interpolated between them and above them.
• Palo Alto is the only United States market with an independent Ford disclosure, and it contradicts a flat premium: the California engineering-manager range of $150,200 to $283,500 is 13.1 percent above the standard LL6 range, while market evidence at technical grades implies roughly 35 percent.
• Chennai is the India anchor at 0.14 of Dearborn, supported by a direct GSR6 submission of 1.784 million rupees and an observed GSR5 to GSR8 span of 0.954 to 3.673 million rupees. Bengaluru sits higher at 0.16 and Coimbatore lower at 0.125.
• Oakville and Windsor are the two markets where employer-posted Canadian ranges independently confirm the factor rather than merely being consistent with it, at 0.72 and 0.70 respectively.
• Auckland, Singapore and Dubai carry no Ford salary evidence at all. They are included because Ford has a visible commercial presence, and their columns should be read as local market models rather than as anything Ford has disclosed.

Executive incentive targets — percent of salary

Named-executive outcomes

• The 2023 plan is authorised through 1 May 2028, and its pool formula is a flow rate rather than a fixed reserve: 2 percent of prior year-end issued shares each year, able to rise to 3 percent with future offsets, plus carry-forward.
• Because the formula includes annual limits, carry-forward and forfeitures, a simple shares-used-over-shares-available utilisation percentage is not a plan metric and is not presented here. The disclosed inputs are 54,678,610 shares used in 2025 and 5,997,540 forfeited.
• Ford granted 22,682,121 restricted stock units to certain employees between 1 January and 15 March 2026, which at the $13.91 reference price is roughly $315 million of gross notional value. That is neither accounting fair value nor realised value nor evidence of broad eligibility.
• Ford has granted no new stock options since 2020, so the $6.49 weighted-average exercise price in the equity plan table describes an entirely legacy population.
• The word ESOP appears frequently in international discussion of Ford but describes nothing Ford actually operates. There is no broad option plan and no employee stock purchase plan.

2023 Long-Term Incentive Plan capacity at 31 December 2025

Vesting — common reported employee schedule

Ford's verified annual executive schedule is three years at 33, 33 and 34 percent, not the four-year schedule common at technology employers. That shortens the retention hook materially: an executive who leaves after two years has already vested two thirds of each annual grant, where a four-year schedule would have released half.

Eligibility by hierarchy level

• GSR1 through GSR7: no standard recurring grant is publicly disclosed. Technology-talent or special retention awards may occur, but the offer letter is the only place to verify one.
• GSR8 and selected technical GSR roles: selective, modelled at $0 to $25,000 a year. The 2023 plan anticipated grants for general salaried employees in certain technology roles, and nothing about that is automatic.
• LL6: certain LL6 only, modelled at $0 to $40,000 and driven by nomination or retention. The LL6 new-hire benefits guide leads with a limited long-term cash award rather than stock.
• LL5 and LL4: inside the expected grant population, modelled at $35,000 to $150,000 and $80,000 to $350,000 respectively, typically annual if selected, with no public grant grid.
• LL3 and above: restricted stock units and performance share units, with performance share units expected to begin at LL3. The 2025 annual awards for named executives were 60 percent performance share units and 40 percent restricted stock units.
• The chief executive is subject to a stock ownership guideline of six times salary, and awards carry clawback and forfeiture terms.

Indicative annual grant value by band — Dearborn

Annualized planning value (±25%), not the face value of every new-hire grant. Share equivalents use the $13.91 reference price at 26 August 2026 close and ignore plan valuation rules and PSU performance. Highlighted rows are disclosed grant-date stock awards.

Named executive target equity

John Lawler is the only 2025 named executive with a pension value change, at $522,803, which is combined with his $170,152 of all other compensation in the table above so that the components reconcile to his disclosed $11,760,181 total. Alicia Boler Davis joined in October 2025, so her $319,231 salary and $319,563 bonus are part-year figures while her $18,012,000 stock line includes a full sign-on grant, which is why her total appears close to the executive chair's. Doug Field's $1,850,244 of all other compensation reflects his announced departure rather than ongoing pay.

Board compensation framework

Because most of the fee is paid in units that vest immediately but cannot be sold until Board separation, a Ford director's reported compensation is close to its economic value at grant while being entirely illiquid until they leave. That is a stronger alignment mechanism than a cash retainer and a weaker one than a genuine holding requirement.

Not publicly disclosed

Modeled promotion planning timeline

The one thing Ford does say about merit is unusually specific and worth reading closely: decisions consider performance relative to peers, position within the salary range, market conditions and the company's ability to pay. Position in range is the lever candidates underweight, because Ford's posted ranges span roughly plus or minus 25 percent around the midpoint, so accepting an offer low in the LL6 range of $132,800 to $250,800 can cost more over three merit cycles than the headline number gains.

Dataset summary

City-level H-1B wage history

All-years aggregates. P25/P75 are rounded reconstruction values marked modeled; medians and record counts are the stronger fields.

Selected title / worksite records

Evidence classification

Explicit “Not publicly disclosed” index

Known gaps and diligence before relying on a cell

1. 1The source bundle added a notional 10 percent employer benefit load to every total-compensation cell. That is employer cost rather than pay, so it has been stripped and total compensation rebuilt as base plus target bonus plus annualised equity. Every total on this page is therefore lower than the corresponding cell in the source report, by design.
2. 2The source bundle applied a flat city factor to base pay at every grade but scaled executive equity at roughly half the United States value in every foreign city from LL4 upward, which pushed offshore total factors toward parity by construction. That step has been removed and one flat factor is applied to base, bonus and equity alike, so base factor and total factor are identical in every market.
3. 3Because the source calibration does not vary by grade, no baseFactorTop or totalFactorTop is set anywhere. Ford's geographic ratios genuinely are flat in this evidence base, and inventing a compression curve would misstate it.
4. 4The one real exception to that flatness is Palo Alto, where Ford's own California LL6 posting implies a 13.1 percent premium against roughly 35 percent at technical grades. That is recorded in the location profile and in the nuances rather than being modelled as a curve, because two disclosed cells do not establish a slope across eleven grades.
5. 5The chief executive and executive chair row is deliberately excluded from the band table and carried in the executive section only. Those are two individuals in one city, and multiplying a global proxy figure by a city factor would produce a meaningless local number.
6. 6The LL2 to LL1 row is retained but marked as excluded from the range chart, because its $6.6 million modelled median is drawn from a disclosed spread of $8.38 million to $20.28 million across six people and would otherwise dominate the chart scale.
7. 7Ford's proxy shows the chief executive total as both $27,519,557 and $27,519,558 in different presentations. This report uses $27,519,558 throughout.
8. 8Alicia Boler Davis's disclosed components sum to $18,972,793 against a reported total of $18,972,794. The one-dollar difference is a proxy rounding artefact and has not been adjusted.
9. 9John Lawler's $522,803 pension value change is folded into his all other compensation line, because the schema has no separate pension column and the components must reconcile to his disclosed total.
10. 10Named-executive bonus targets in dollars are reconstructed as disclosed salary times disclosed target percentage. Ford discloses the percentage and the paid amount but not the dollar target, and prorating means the reconstruction does not reduce cleanly to the paid figure.
11. 11The two H-1B datasets report 988 applications and 336 positions for overlapping periods. Neither has been reconciled to the other because they count different units over different fiscal windows.
12. 12The represented hourly workforce is excluded from the band table entirely. The source bundle carries no collective-agreement wage table, progression schedule or profit-sharing formula, and no outside figures have been imported to fill that gap.
13. 13Only ten bands are shown rather than a fuller ladder, because the source bundle evidences eleven normalised levels and the eleventh is the chief executive row that has been moved to the executive section. GSR1 through GSR4 are collapsed into one row for the same reason: Ford discloses a range at GSR4 only.

FX rates used — 1 USD equals, snapshot 2026-08-26

Single-date conversion layer for comparability; it ignores payroll-date FX, tax, purchasing power, benefits valuation and hedging. Compensation intelligence, not legal, tax, investment, immigration or employment advice.

Source register — 39 sources

Ford publishes no quarterly headcount series, no attrition rate and no global annual increase percentage. The only forward-looking workforce number it has put on the record is the 4,000-position European reduction, so this table is deliberately short rather than padded with estimates.