More: Ford to Hire 800 More Salaried Workers, Most of Them in Michigan

Ford plans to hire 800 more salaried employees in the U.S. than it had previously planned for this year.

The automaker said today that it is adding 3,000 U.S. salaried workers in 2013, including 85%-90% in Michigan. It had previously announced plans to add 2,200. About eight in 10 of the new workers are engineers or information technology specialists.

The new jobs are less than a third of the 13,000 salaried employees Ford fired or bought out from 2006 to 2009.

Ford is trying to improve its MyFord Touch infotainment system, which has drawn criticism from customers and third-party testers such as Consumer Reports.

Software is playing a growing role in vehicle development.

“It’s incredibly different,” Felicia Fields, Ford’s group vice president for human resources, told reporters at Ford world headquarters. “It’s more diverse, it’s more challenging, it’s more complex. But we’re finding more people in other industries who have an interest in automotive.”

Fields said that about two-thirds of the 3,000 jobs are new and that the hiring is required to support Ford’s product ambitions. The rest are jobs that are being filled after workers left the company. She said the automaker has already hired about 1,500 workers this year.

Read more at Detroit Free Press.

Ford understands the importance of paying workers enough so that they can afford to buy their products.