The fate of the nation's Big Three automakers and their employees

We await the fate of the nation's Big Three automakers and their employees.

"One out of 10 jobs in this country are auto-related. Twenty percent of retail sales are auto-related or automobiles, so this is a national problem," Sen. Carl Levin, D-Michigan, told NBC's "Meet the Press”.

The Center for Automotive Research, a think tank in Ann Arbor, Michigan, that is pushing for a bailout, estimates about 2.5 million job cuts if just half of the Big Three's manufacturing capacity shuts down.

About 240,000 of those job losses would be at the automakers; 800,000 would be at various suppliers and dealerships; and another 1.4 million job losses would come from businesses that rely on automaker spending, the think tank estimates.

CNN