There are signs that TSMC is already bracing for that competition. The company’s original plan for staffing the Arizona fab was to hire primarily in the U.S. and send those recruits to Taiwan for about a year of training, sources told Nikkei Asia. But after realizing how difficult it is to find enough qualified employees in the U.S., the company has decided to start recruiting in Taiwan as well, the sources said.
In addition to wooing engineers, semiconductor makers in Arizona are even more desperate for the technicians needed to staff the plants around the clock in order to ensure production runs smoothly. This work is physically demanding, including lifting heavy tools and walking long distances in clean-room suits.
“For every engineering degree they have on staff … they probably need four to six technicians to come along,” Squires said.
“Why are Qualcomm, Nvidia, Intel and AMD all looking to enlarge their engineering teams in Taiwan and India? Because they also struggled to find enough qualified staff in the U.S.,” an executive at a Taiwanese chip developer told Nikkei Asia.
A good friend of mine (from our years of working together in semiconductor manufacturing) worked in China for about 5 years. (She was born in China, graduated from a U.S. university, worked in the U.S. for many years, naturalized U.S. citizen.) She returned to the U.S. and works as a product manager for a manufacturer of consumables used in semiconductor manufacturing. Her largest customer is Intel. She knows the nitty-gritty of chip manufacturing.
She told me that Chinese workers are willing to work much harder, for longer hours, than American workers. Chinese workers were educated in the strict, focused Chinese educational system.
The technicians in semiconductor manufacturing need to be smart, hard-working, totally focused and perfectionistic. The slightest error could cause the loss of an entire wafer with hundreds of chips.
In the U.S., young people who are smart enough to be semiconductor manufacturing technicians usually go to college. They don’t want to do the hard work for the lesser pay of technicians.
For every engineer working on chip design, a fab needs many, many technicians to make the wafers day in and day out, round the clock.
They will not find enough qualified, reliable technicians in the U.S. They will have to hire overseas.
Wendy
In the U.S., young people who are smart enough to be semiconductor manufacturing technicians usually go to college. They don’t want to do the hard work for the lesser pay of technicians.
In America, we tend to tax working people and small business owners up the wazoo. Inherited wealth gets a pass (e.g., America’s large multigenerational fortures are mostly the result of the lack of taxation, rather than whatever productive activity the first generation workers were up to) and the qualified dividends and capital gains of the “leisure class” are taxed at a much lower rate than wage and salary income.
Case in point: a married couple with a $100,000 annual wage & salary income, taking the $24,000 Standard Deduction, would pay $8,722 in Federal Income Taxes for 2021, plus another $7,650 in FICA. A neighbor couple with a multi-million dollar investment portfolio might decide that working made little sense. Instead they draw $100,000/yr in qualified dividends and capital gains from their portfolio. Their Federal income tax liability? Zero. (See, 2021 IRS Federal Income Tax Table)
When I quit my high salary engineering job back in 1994, I was astonished at how little I paid in taxes on the same level of spending. You almost had to volunteer to pay any taxes by selling something. If more working folks understood this, they’d be sharpening their pitchforks. The dumbest thing you can do in America, tax-wise, is to work for a living earning wage & salary income.
I’m glad I learned about “leisure class” taxation in my early 30’s. It really turbocharged my retirement savings.
We need to cut taxes on people with wage & salary income under $100,000/yr and put a surtax on the “leisure class”.
<<We need to cut taxes on people with wage & salary income under $100,000/yr and put a surtax on the “leisure class”.>>
What differentiates those who have saved and retired and have an AGI of $100K from ‘the leisure class’?
Nothing. A dollar of income is a dollar of income. I don’t see the economic purpose for having a $100,000 of dividends and capital gains for a married couple be completely untaxed, while a neighbor who’s working for the same level of income is taxed up the wazoo.
And I’ve been benefiting from the system for 28 years. I can’t imagine what the working people think unless they’re ignorant of the system.
We need to cut taxes on people with wage & salary income under $100,000/yr and put a surtax on the “leisure class”.
Well…I’m a big proponent of a more fair taxing scheme. However, the retirees who are receiving Social Security and, I would venture to say, are distinguished from ‘the leisure’ class by having paid tax on earned income while working…it seems to me they are being lumped into a class for taxation that perhaps is just as unfair for them as the case is for that same ‘leisure class’.
I’m not arguing with you, just trying to understand where the demarcation for tax ‘justice’ lies.
Well…I’m a big proponent of a more fair taxing scheme. However, the retirees who are receiving Social Security and, I would venture to say, are distinguished from ‘the leisure’ class by having paid tax on earned income while working…it seems to me they are being lumped into a class for taxation that perhaps is just as unfair for them as the case is for that same ‘leisure class’.
I’m not arguing with you, just trying to understand where the demarcation for tax ‘justice’ lies.
I’ve long favored taxing 100% of Social Security income. That will prevent people from complaining when it’s only partially taxed as it is now.
But like I said, I’d cut taxes on people making under $100,000/yr, but apply that lower tax rate to all income (including SS, dividends, capital gains, and inheritances.) We need to bring the “leisure class” and those that benefit from inherited wealth that escapes taxation completely up to the taxation level of say a school teacher or firefighter. Too many “loafers” are complaining that labor isn’t working hard enough.