Bloomberg
-
A growing nationwide shortage of high-skilled workers threatens to delay construction of billions of dollars in new semiconductor plants across the US and constrain future chip production unless the industry pools resources and the government keeps up funding, a new report said.
The deficit is expected to be most acute in states such as Texas, California, Arizona, New York and Ohio, where many of the new facilities are being planned, according to new analysis including a survey of employers from McKinsey & Co, the chip industry group SEMI and the National Science Foundation. Altogether, the skilled labor deficit is projected to reach as much as 157,000 full-time workers by 2030, the study released on Tuesday showed.
The dearth of talent risks stalling plans by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) to invest as much as US$265 billion in a dozen chipmaking and packaging facilities in Arizona, as well as Micron Technology Inc’s vision to spend US$100 billion on memory production in New York and Samsung Electronics Co’s logic chip facility in Texas. Even Intel Corp’s delayed US$28 billion investment in Ohio is set for shortages once production ramps up, the report said.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s fab in Phoenix, Arizona is pictured on March 3 last year.
Photo: Bloomberg
The challenge marks the latest hurdle for chipmakers seeking to expand their manufacturing footprint in the US and reverse the migration of production capacity to Asia that unfolded decades ago. Rising prices for a wide range of goods, including copper, steel and cement, threaten to increase the cost of construction for new facilities billed as a centerpiece of US President Donald Trump’s economic agenda.
This labor gap risks undermining not only the billions of dollars in planned investment by companies, but also the federal grants aimed at boosting US production under the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, the report said.
The report recommended a range of solutions, including continued government funding, expanded curriculum on semiconductors and earlier exposure to chip industry careers.
“There’s just not enough talent to go around,” said Taylor Roundtree, a partner at McKinsey who helped with the analysis. “Folks are realizing that the potential gap is so large that they collectively do have to solve it.”
By 2030, about 74 percent of the semiconductor industry’s unfilled roles would be in manufacturing and 60 percent in engineering, the study showed. While CHIPS Act-funded programs have helped to increase the number of technicians available, those initiatives have hardly made a dent in addressing the need for manufacturing and hardware engineers.
Already, nearly three-quarters of employers are reporting significant difficulty in hiring engineers, according to the survey, which canvassed semiconductor companies. The root of the problem is that few US engineering students go on to work in the chip industry, with most opting for more lucrative software-related fields like artificial intelligence.