US semiconductor building boom means staff shortages and talent slipping away The US semiconductor industry is said to be struggling to hire as well as retain staff as the country cranks up its chipmaking capacity to reduce its reliance on foreign supplies. Labor is proving to be a challenge for revitalizing the nation's semiconductor landscape, the consultants at McKinsey say in their latest report on …
"Could it be the firm's own fault? All that time spent offshoring the industrial processes because, well, costs."
The bigger issue is State Department restrictions on sales of semiconductors below a certain scale. That scale restriction also doesn't keep up with the state of the art which has made it pointless to build fabs in the US and have to petition the government to accept and ship orders to each customer. Build in Malaysia and don't worry about it. Labor is such a small component that cost of utilities, taxes, fees, permits and licenses dominate. The US government could have worked on reducing all of the red tape and not had to bribe companies to build in the US with billions in taxpayer money. It's not as if these companies need the funding handed to them or they can't build at all. At least, the US taxpayer should have an equity position in these companies so profits flow back for all of the investment.
That's not accurate. If a U.S. company is fabbing semiconductors in Malaysia, the components are considered U.S. and subject to U.S. restrictions. It's very straight-forward despite people outside the industry trying to make it appear complicated.
The issue is that the cost to build a new semiconductor wafer fab anywhere is now in the billions of dollars - assuming the environmentalists allow them to build it in the first place. This is a massive hit on the bottom line, and while that semiconductor company is paying for a U.S. fab that won't be operational for many years, their competitors are undercutting them in price because they have lower operating costs from established fabs. This is economically damaging because it puts the semiconductor company building the fab in a weakened market position.
The U.S. is not "bribing" companies to build these fabs, they are financing the fabs so they are economically possible.
Also these fabs don't hire community college grads, wafer fabs are run by physics PhDs which command huge salaries and you don't find on any street corner.
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>Lack of career advancement, lack of workplace flexibility, and lack of support being three of the most common motivations for moving on. Plenty also complained about not being paid enough, being worked too hard, or even their workplaces being unsafe.
The solution to this is obviously to increase the labor pool through channeling middle schoolers into the career path, rather than making the roles safer, more attractive or paying reasonable wages
"The solution to this is obviously to increase the labor pool through channeling middle schoolers into the career path"
There's so few jobs in the sector in the US and it's unlikely that even this push is going to create many more, needing a specific set of skills to work at the fabs is going to be problematic. Companies might have to have an apprenticeship program and grow their own workers. It's doesn't have to be from seed. They can insist on some sort of engineering coursework or degree so the applicant as a foundation to start from.
All major US infrastructure developments have required migrant labour. All major economies require migrant labour to top up and fill gaps to maximise productivity. If you don't like migrant labour, take your foot off the gas, chill out and choose a more relaxed path. Leave the economic dynamism and tech development to others.
The UK has one solution. It is limiting access to international students at UK universities to keep Johnny Foreigner out. Foreign students subsidised domestic students, so now most UK universities are cutting courses - even ones that are internationally rated - and sacking staff. STEM courses remain viable due to government funding. And who needs well-rounded, educated citizens - they will just criticise the government.
Most factory jobs, even in tech, are just factory jobs. You don't need a degree is systems analysis to press buttons. Just headhunt staff at the local chicken plucking factory and offer them a bit more.
Quote
"Most factory jobs, even in tech, are just factory jobs. You don't need a degree is systems analysis to press buttons. "
I'll invite you down to robot corner one day.... where we 'press buttons' all day long ... well ok they're keys really but I guess they count as buttons and we end up making widgets.... lots of widgets...
And you can enjoy the 'low skill button pushing job' I had... Aluminium casting.. loaded in to 2 spindle twin turret lathe by robot loader and its your job to select the correct method of manufacture, programming the lathe (while avoiding the twin turrets colliding with each other/the spindles or the spindles hitting the robot or each other while loading)
its just a few buttons to be pressed.
Then verifying the setup... press start and hope (dont stand in front of machine... a 3lb casting spinning at 3000rpm through the head tends to hurt...)
finally , you get it back from 1st article and then press a few buttons to correct the faults
Its easy.. press a few buttons...
Just like its easy deploying the latest winblows to 1500 PCs across 3 sites all at the same time.. press a few buttons and its done...
"And you can enjoy the 'low skill button pushing job' I had... Aluminium casting.. loaded in to 2 spindle twin turret lathe by robot loader and its your job to select the correct method of manufacture, programming the lathe (while avoiding the twin turrets colliding with each other/the spindles or the spindles hitting the robot or each other while loading)"
So more skills than a migrant with a spotty education, but not needing a PhD in Physics.
I'm afraid McKinsey lost what little credibility they had in their infamous measuring developer output report. Them complaining about a situation that they and their ilk are directly responsible for doesn't help either.
We've been in race to the bottom for the last fifty years. We've even avoided the effort of walking down the stairs by jumping out of the window. Here comes the ground.
Interestingly, there's a commentary on the generally excellent CSIS web site (link below) that links the decline of US chip making pretty directly to the malign influence of economic short-termism, with a special mention for BCG, well worth ten minutes of your time:
https://www.csis.org/analysis/strategy-united-states-regain-its-position-semiconductor-manufacturing
Manufacturers think that there are hordes of people eager to become semiconductor engineers, because in 5-10 years down the line there might be a fab in their area.
LOL
Nobody is going to learn this stuff if there are no jobs that will make the nice return of the investment.
Why would you become and engineer if everything nice gets outsourced and locally there are only some basic crap jobs that don't pay meaningfully better than menial work?
Spend years on education, get deep into student debt, forget about socialising, living your life only for all that effort to be exploited by a big corporation that will get rid of you the second you are not needed?
You can have better life working at warehouse or stacking shelves. maybe sell some weed on the side, get good benefits and give middle finger to the system.
Make sure you own something, buy shares, funds even a little bit and build up your passive income, so then you can retire with better mental health and probably earlier than those engineers making effort.
Manufacturers think that there are hordes of people eager to become semiconductor engineers, because in 5-10 years down the line there might be a fab in their area."
The really high paying jobs are the ones with the fewest posts. If you are a designer of semiconductors, you likely do your job in an office someplace that's nice to live (for a certain measure of nice). Where the fab is isn't a factor as you may never visit it. The fab will have a few senior engineers that can set up and troubleshoot issues and as the pyramid of staff moves down, there will be a handful of workers that need to be skilled, but not necessarily loaded with engineering prowess.
There's been a bit of a bloodbath in the tech sector recently so the smart move might be to use some of those billions in government cash to retrain people to work in semiconductor fabrication. Of course, there's a small matter of timing -- we want to treat people like widgets using 'just in time' hiring inventory management. There's also a small matter of what, exactly, is meant by 'tech' -- articles about layoffs fail to identify exactly what these people did (Google's Python group being an exception).....and obviously people are trained for 'x' so can't possibly work in 'y' etc.
I've never seen any common sense come out of McKinsey (or any other highly-paid consulting firm, for that matter). If you want to know how to improve a business, ask the people working there. You'll get information you can actually use at a fraction of the cost. Granted, it may not be as palatable to your upper management as a gold-bound book pushing the latest-and-greatest MBA shit, but if you want results, spend that money on improving your workplace instead. You'll retain more workers and have an easier time hiring.
struggling to hire as well as retain staff
What sort of staff?
workers are needed for building and operating chip fabrication and packaging plants
Ah, bricklayers, carpenters, and warehouse labourers.
the average time spent open for engineering jobs was 26 days, and for technician jobs it was 28 days.
But these aren't engineering or technician jobs. They're warehouse workers.
The bigger issue may be the increasing number of semiconductor employees that are thinking about quitting.
When you can make more flipping burgers at MacDonald's, of course you'll quit.
focusing especially on technician roles and jobs that don't require a bachelor's degree, which represent 60 percent of new semiconductor positions.
Yes. Warehouse workers. 99.9999999% of "semiconductor" jobs are *not* engineering. It's stopping the rain coming through the roof, cleaning the toilets, and loading the delivery lorries.
Every time anything happens in the tech world, we get the same old stories:
"There is a SHORTAGE of Qualified Tech Workers!!!"
"Americans are too Lazy and Stupid to major in Tech Stuff!!!"
It is not true. The actual agenda is to obtain more Visas to import Half-Priced Foreign Labor.
What the people who keep using the word "Shortage" want is to push down wages.
As for the college students, why should they major in Computer Engineering when the industry has
made it perfectly clear that they really don't want Americans: The corporations really want Half-Priced H1-Bs.
It is all Propaganda, Misinformation, and Lies.
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