Labor crisis in U. S. chip manufacturing leaves Samsung, TSMC desperate for talent
Labor crisis in U. S. chip manufacturing leaves Samsung, TSMC desperate for talent. S. chip manufacturing faces a shortage of up to 157,000 skilled workers by 2030, a matter of concern for companies like Samsung.
What happened
U. S. semiconductor manufacturing faces a historic worker shortage as demand soars. Here’s how chipmakers and U. S. universities aim to fix it. American chipmakers like Micron are hiring aggressively in Asia, where talent pipelines are strongest and worker bonuses can top $500,000. In this articleMUASMLAMDNVDAMUINTCTSMSKHYFollow your favorite stocksCREATE FREE ACCOUNTwatch nowVIDEO12:1312:13‘Concerned:’ Samsung, Micron and other chipmakers face U. S. undergoes its fastest chip manufacturing buildout in history, in a race to make enough memory and logic processors to power AI.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and Intel are now pumping out advanced logic chips from new fabrication plants, or fabs, in Arizona. Samsung will be the next chipmaker to manufacture advanced logic in the U. Samsung's advanced logic chip fab in Taylor, Texas, shown in July, 2026.
The wider picture
S. facility, at Purdue Research Park in West Lafayette, Indiana, although the $4 billion fab is for packaging memory chips instead of front-end manufacturing. Under one scenario, SK Hynix would lease part of Intel's chipmaking facility in Ohio, Reuters reported, citing people familiar with the matter. watch nowVIDEO22:4122:41SK Hynix's $720 billion bet to end the memory shortageAI AgeAt a Micron event in July, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick pushed SK Hynix and Samsung to build front-end memory fabs in the U.
Creating the pipelineAlthough skilled chip workers are concentrated overseas, bringing over foreign talent on H-1B visas has become a costly and cumbersome process. The long-term plan, the chipmakers told CNBC, is to create the talent pipeline domestically. Samsung is getting ahead of the shortage with a workforce development program that kicked off in 2023, providing millions of dollars in donations to the University of Texas, Texas A&M and the University of Illinois, with new chip engineering programs at each.
Schools including Purdue and Arizona State have new semiconductor degree programs, and all the biggest chipmakers are investing millions to create pipelines of U. Manpower is at the heart of the world's ability to make enough chips to power artificial intelligence, and the U. "I'm concerned," said Jon Taylor, executive vice president of Samsung's semiconductor division in Austin, Texas, in an interview with CNBC.
What has been reported
S. graduates who take engineering roles enter the semiconductor industry each year, according to McKinsey, and 73% of chip employers report significant difficulty in filling engineering roles. It's part of a $35 billion buildout in the state, and Samsung said the two new fabs are expected to create about 3,500 jobs. "While America is the birthplace of semiconductors and leads the world in chip design, almost all advanced chips have been manufactured in Asia for decades. That's where the talent pipelines are strongest, and it's why Idaho-based Micron has held expedited hiring sprees at technical universities in South Korea, interviewing students and offering them permanent positions at its Asia fabs, all in a day.
"We're already the largest producer of college graduates for the Intel Corporation globally, and so we're trying to now become that for TSMC," Michael Crow, president of ASU, told CNBC. S chip jobs often pay far less than in countries like South Korea, where chip workers are highly sought after in the marriage market. The roles there often come with grueling 12-hour shifts, but when thousands of workers threatened strikes at Micron, Samsung and SK Hynix, bonuses ballooned upwards of $500,000.
"We can secure a number of high-quality employees within a few years, based on the collaboration with the local community," SK Hynix CEO Kwak Noh-Jung told CNBC during a groundbreaking ceremony in Indiana.
What happens next
"According to a Reuters report on Wednesday, SK Hynix is in talks with Intel to manufacture its memory chips in the U. Taylor said those decisions at Samsung aren't up to him. Samsung and SK Hynix both told CNBC they're bringing workers over from South Korea temporarily to kick off their new U. S. employees to its home country for several months to get hands-on training, following a similar move by TSMC when its first Arizona fabs were under construction in 2021.
"ASML, a European advanced chip equipment maker, recently launched a U. S. schools, with big investments from chip companies. Purdue launched a series of semiconductor degrees in 2022, with some 2,500 students enrolled in chip-related courses each semester.