I think UC Berkeley turns out more social justice warriors than engineers these days...
BTW, I heard China is BUYING key process engineers from Taiwan with salaries like 2 and 3x to move to the mainland and "transfer" the technology.
We had that problem when we moved our manufacturing to Singapore piece by piece. We were constantly training new people to do the top jobs as often the good ones would leave to start their own companies to compete or go to competitors with what they learned at a much higher salary. I used to argue it was a good reason to bring jobs back to maybe Mexico... but they'd say the tax savings and kickbacks/subsidies were hard to compete with.
The semiconductor pipe dream?
Engineer shortage likely to hamper fab investment effectiveness
Judy Lin, DIGITIMES Asia, Taipei
Thursday 18 August 2022
DIGITIMES
Semiconductor companies throughout the world are already short of engineers to operate their current supply chains. How will new fabs to be built in the next few years find enough people to run the fabs? Talent shortage will be a key problem to address if countries want to ensure effectiveness of their investments.
While the US and EU finally got their respective CHIPS Act ready to invest billions of dollars building their semiconductor production capacities back up to secure strategic supplies, talent shortage will be a perennial headache for their new fabs.
Many people would think Taiwan already has the most abundant supply of semiconductor engineers since it ranks the world's No. 1 in the R&D manpower per thousand people item of the 2021 World Competitiveness Ranking released by the International Institute for Management Development (IMD).
But according to a recent survey, semiconductor engineer vacancies in Taiwan averaged 35,000 every month in first-quarter 2022, up 39.8% from the same period last year. A qualified engineer job seeker is getting 3.4 offers on average, according to 104.com.tw, a jobs website in Taiwan.
"This is the fiercest competition I have seen in 15 years!" said Milan Chang, Micron's talent acquisition director in Taiwan in the 104.com annual paper. Chang believes the talent war will persist in the next three years, and there will always be a shortage of semiconductor workers in Taiwan because of low birth rates.
A country manager of a foreign headhunter company who declined to be identified told DIGITIMES Asia that they have already started to help Taiwan semiconductor companies hire workers from India and Southeast Asia. "Taiwan has an advantage over Singapore in this wave of talent war, because Taiwan's semiconductor salary is high and the price level is only a fraction to that in Singapore," said the manager.
Semiconductor job vacancies chasing after limited talent supplies in Taiwan
| | 1Q21
| 2Q21
| 3Q21
| 4Q21
| 1Q22
| Average opening to semiconductor jobseeker ratio
| 2.5
| 2.9
| 3.2
| 3.5
| 3.4
| Average opening to all-industry jobseeker ratio
| 1.2
| 1.3
| 1.3
| 1.6
| 1.6
|
Source: 104.com.tw, compiled by DIGITIMES Asia, August 2022
There are 1,700 semiconductor companies in the industry supply chain in Taiwan, including wafer, substrate and other materials, IC design houses, IC foundry manufacturers, as well as packaging and testing. The fight for talent is getting more and more intense each year. However, it is the foreign companies such as Intel, AMD, Nvidia, Micron or local multinational firms such as MediaTek, TSMC, UMC, that have deep pockets to raise wages or use big bonuses to attract the best people.
Memory module firm Phison's founder KS Pua has called for a regulatory reform to lower the threshold for admitting foreign talent to work in Taiwan. Pua himself is a Malaysian citizen who came to Taiwan to study in the university and stayed to work here after graduation. Since Phison is relatively small in scale, Pua is providing scholarships for Malaysian students to study in Taiwan and hire them to work in his company as a tactic to attract talents.
Meanwhile, SEMI Taiwan president Terry Tsao pointed out that as the semiconductor industry becomes more complex, the lack of highly skilled engineers, such as PhDs doing research on next generation semiconductors, may affect the development of advanced technologies. But the numbers of engineering PhD students in Taiwan have been on rapid decline over the past 10 years, too.
The highest wage raise this year has been seen in engineer positions to be based in southern Taiwan, as TSMC will set up new 7nm and 28nm fabs in Kaohisung, attracting engineers to move south. Suppliers such as Merck and Entegris also have announced to make ambitious investments there too.
It is understandable why the first wave of chip talent war is taking place in Taiwan. The majority of new capacities added in 2022 come from TSMC and UMC and are concentrated in 28-40 nm node chips to be produced on 300mm wafers, according to TrendForce, a market research company.
While Taiwan's foundry manufacturers produce 63% of the semiconductors and almost 90% of the advanced chips (made by processing technology under 10nm nodes) for the world, the trend of diversifying production to cut dependence on Taiwan is seen as a journey of no return due to escalating geopolitical tension between China and the US.
Talent wars in Europe, Southeast AsiaTalent wars are already taking place in Europe. Bosch, GlobalFoundries, Infineon, and Siltronic are fighting to get their hands on the limited supply of electrical and electronic engineers near the Dresden area.
Bosch has just announced to invest EUR3 billion (US$3.05 billion) to expand capacity through 2026, encouraged by EU's commitment of EUR43 billion in public and private investment to double its share of the global market for chips to 20% by 2030. Intel, GlobalFoundries, STMicroelectronics, and Infineon have all announced investments in Europe.
A Handelsblatt report cited industry association Silicon Saxony as estimating there will be about 4,000 jobs in the chip industry in the region each year, and around 100,000 people will be needed in the microelectronics and communications industry in Saxony alone in 2030, which is 30,000 more than today. At the same time, around 5,000 industry specialists will retire by then.
The talent fight will also stretch to Southeast Asia. GlobalFoundries celebrated its first tool's arrival at its new US$4 billion fab in Singapore, with capacity scheduled to be ramp up in 2023. Taiwan's UMC also announced to invest US$5 billion in its Singapore campus to expand capacity.
In Malaysia, Intel's US$7.1 billion 10-year investment in Penang to set up assembly, testing and R&D center will compete head-to-head with 54 OSAT service providers already operating in Malaysia. Bosch is also building a test center for finished semiconductor chips and sensors in Penang, which will start operations in 2023. Infineon has decided to invest US$1.8 billion to build a wafer fab module in Kulim to increase its manufacturing capacity in power semiconductors. The construction is expected to be completed by the third quarter of 2024.
According to SEMI, 29 new fabs will complete construction later this year and in 2023, including eight new fabs in China and eight in Taiwan in 2022. In North America, six new fabs will start construction, while Japan and South Korea will begin construction of two new fabs each.
Although advanced fabs are highly automated and would reduce workforce on the manufacturing processes, several roles such as process engineering, production operations, and logistics and equipment supportsare still indispensable to keep the fabs running.
Comparison between EU and US Chips Act and their goals
| | EU
| US
| Chips Act investment in manufacturing/production
| EUR43 billion
| US$39 billion
| Current global chip production share
| 10%
| 12%
| Goal of global share
| 20%
| 17.5%*
|
*Adding the 5.5% needed for strategic applications to the current 12% of US, estimated by Eightfold AI
Source: SIA and Eightfold AI, compiled by DIGITIMES Asia, August 2022
If the US is to re-shore the semiconductor capacity needed for critical applications, the US needs to add 18-20 fabs, about 70,000-90,000 total fab jobs, according to the estimation of Eightfold AI Whitepaper: "Rising to meet this opportunity would require the US to increase its current (fab) workforce by 50%."
Projection for US re-shoring capacity goals
| | % of global production to be added
| Equivalent of fabs
| Additioonal fab jobs needed
| To meet capacity needs for only critical semiconductor applications
| 5.5
| 18-20
| 70-90k
| | To meet capacity needs for self-sufficiency
| 20
| 74-80
| 300 k
| |
Source: Eightfold AI, compiled by DIGITIMES Asia, August 2022
If demand continues growing to outpace supplies, the large-scale extra capacities as a result of the new fabs are likely to be sustainable. If demand declines due to economic growth slowdown, plans for building new fabs are more likely to be put on hold, or scrapped.
Although some industry experts believe re-shoring is possible by multi-facet efforts, including reinventing fabs to streamline workforce and reskilling the talent, the semiconductor companies, especially late comers, still have to overcome the talent shortage problem first and then demand-supply imbalance next, so that their massive semiconductor investment won't become pipe dreams.
Engineers working at semiconductor clean rooms
Photo: DIGITIMES Asia
From digitimes.com |
