The US has a shortage of chip workers

America's ambition to be self-sufficient in chip sources faces a major obstacle as the number of semiconductor graduates cannot keep up with market development.

Reuters cited research released on July 25 by the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) and Oxford Economics, showing that the US semiconductor industry will lack about 67,000 workers by 2030.

This year, the US chip industry's workforce is 345,000. By 2030, with the growth rate of the market, this industry needs 460,000 workers. However, with the current rate of graduates, the US will not have enough workers to fill the market's needs.

Inside an Intel chip factory in Oregon, USA. Photo: Intel

The research comes in the context of the US trying to strengthen the localization of the chip industry. The CHIPS Act - which allocates tens of billions of dollars to support new manufacturing sites as well as research and development - was passed in August 2022. Leading chip companies such as Intel, TSMC, and Samsung said they would apply for subsidies.

Those factories will create jobs, SIA says, but the chip industry will be short of both manual workers and computer scientists, engineers and operations technicians.

In the future, half of the jobs in the chip industry will require engineers. "This is a problem we have been facing for a long time. But with the CHIPS Act in particular and chip companies moving back to the US, the problem becomes urgent and needs the parties to sit down and find a solution." SIA President John Neuffer said.

Shortage of talent in the chip industry is a common problem in many countries around the world. Mr. Kim Huat Ooi, Vice President and General Director of Intel Products Vietnam, once said that human resources are one of the biggest challenges in each country's ambition to be self-sufficient in chips . "The chip industry requires high complexity and technical and technological capabilities to solve new problems. To design their own chips, engineers need a lot of R&D skills," he said. According to him, investing in human resources takes time and costs, but in the long run it is definitely profitable.