Following the closure of NUMMI, Toyota officials have release employment figures for its San Antonio, TX plant. Coming as a surprise to many, Toyota plans to increase the number of hired workers by 850 to total around 2,700 while resuming a second production shift in February. This will mark the first time since idling for nearly three months last year that Toyota will be running two shifts. Almost 150 new production workers will have joined the team by end of next week, most of who worked as temps at the production plant previously.

Most of these hires are a part of Toyota’s plans to get its Tacoma pickup out of the production lines by June/July of 2010. Toyota will start building the Tacoma and its full-sized counterpart, Tundra’s on a trial basis in late spring. While the plant will eventually be capable of producing over 200,000 Tacoma’s a year, Toyota officials hope that this $100 million retooling effort will add around 100,000 new Tacoma’s to the American market for the first few years.

After Toyota closed down NUMMI, to relocate production of the Tacoma to San Antonio, officials estimated an increase of around 1,000 jobs at this factory. However, Bexan County Judge Nelson Wolff said that the 850 new jobs that Toyota announced is “pretty darn close” and that they will have a “clearer picture of everything after things level off”. Bexan County can still expect an influx of workers/companies moving in closer to the production plant, since most of the 1,100 California based suppliers will now consider relocating to Texas.

Source: [MySanAntonio]