It has been widely hypothesized that the transition to battery electric vehicles will require 30% fewer assembly workers compared to internal combustion engine vehicles. This work uses publicly available datasets on vehicle production and employment to show that vehicle assembly plants in the U.S. that have previously assembled internal combustion vehicles but have since fully transitioned to assembling battery electric vehicles have required more, not fewer, workers to assemble the same number of vehicles. Our study suggests that widespread loss of employment at electric vehicle assembly sites is a smaller risk than many fear. Moreover, our study serves as a call for more regionally-focused analyses of the transition's effects on labor using data-driven and macro-level surveying approaches.