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Apple Supplier TSMC Delays Production of 4nm Chips at Arizona Factory Due to Skilled Worker Shortage
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For all the people suggesting it is a pay issue … are you suggesting that people just be completely unemployed rather than take a job that pays less than they would desire?
Intel also has fabs in the area and pays better. Anyone involved in semiconductors in metropolitan area is already working at Intel - there isn't a duplicate workforce with semiconductor experience / slack capacity just sitting around in the Phoenix area waiting for this to happen. So TSMC has a few choices -
1) Train a new workforce
2) Competitively pursue Intel workers with higher wages
3) Do both 1 and 2
4) Hope that these workers are just going to show up out of thin air
TSMC has mostly done 4 followed by a miniscule amount 2 and a bit more of 1. 3 is the optimal choice, but it would compress TSMC's profit margins, and they are offended at the prospect of paying an American engineer more than a engineer in Taiwan.
TSMC is paying engineers in Taiwan with Masters degrees around $70K USD to start, which is a pittance relative to what someone with a Masters Degree in Engineering is paid in the US in Semiconductors / Software.
They want to treat the US Fab as a profit engine to squeeze - they don't see it as an investment in a workforce with wages that are higher than what they pay their people in Taiwan. Hence - extend, pretend, and hope people get desperate enough to work for them.
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My first reaction was "In the US they do not even find qualified people for the job as...", but I remembered that politics are not allowed here.
There is a simple solution: Allows a few thousand Chinese workers to move to the US. Most would accept that offer. Those people would pay income taxes in the US and over time more and more American workers could join them.
There is a simple solution: Allows a few thousand Chinese workers to move to the US. Most would accept that offer. Those people would pay income taxes in the US and over time more and more American workers could join them.
I’m assuming you missed the part where TSMC said it’s a shortage of people that have the necessary skill and experience in installing this type of equipment?
“We are encountering certain challenges, as there is an insufficient amount of skilled workers with the specialized expertise required for equipment installation in a semiconductor-grade facility," said TSMC chair Mark Liu
Really sounds like you could just round up some day laborers to **** up your $70+ million equipment 🙄
Yeah, but that would be staffing the factory. This article is supposedly about building the factory, which would be a completely different skill set. Did MacRumors get the article detail that wrong?
The factory is already built - this is about installing and calibrating the equipment inside the plant along with running the industrial operations of the plant. This is the workforce needed to run the plant - not the workforce that is used to build the plant, although there is a period of time where the two overlap.
And the only reason that those poorer parts of Planet Earth have those exceptional skillsets is because they were picked by greedy CEO’s wanting to pay pennies and maximise profits, which was a windfall in the beginning. Now the tables are turning and we have a dumber workforce through no fault of their own. Don’t be so hard on your country, you are not the only ones who have been sold out by governments and multinational corporations as they exploit the leanest payroll opportunities.
I know when I worked in the electronic manufacturing industry that made consumer electronics, the physical construction of the factories were built by local building companies. The production lines were built and installed by European companies and the chip machines putting electrical components onto the pcb's were built and installed by Japanese companies. All the soldering equipment, hand tools, surface mount repair machines were provided and install by American companies. All the computers to run everything in the factories was provided by either NEC, HP or Dell. To my memory the only Chinese built thing was the chairs that people sat on.
Greed drove the manufacturers to close down and move to cheaper labor countries and with that came the loss of experience from specialist construction workers and experienced electronic manufacturing workers. A lot of experienced workers were crapped on by manufacturing companies going to cheaper labor countries and whilst many of these experience workers are still alive today of still of employment age, I doubt they will want to work for an industry that shafted them.
Greed drove the manufacturers to close down and move to cheaper labor countries and with that came the loss of experience from specialist construction workers and experienced electronic manufacturing workers. A lot of experienced workers were crapped on by manufacturing companies going to cheaper labor countries and whilst many of these experience workers are still alive today of still of employment age, I doubt they will want to work for an industry that shafted them.
Just doing some lazy googling earlier (I say lazy because I didn’t look up what any OTHER company was in the process of building…) they could all just be sucked into whatever’s going on in Chandler.
A look inside Intel's mammoth Arizona chipmaking fab
Take a tour inside one of the highest-tech factories in the world, to see how Intel manufactures microprocessors.
www.cnet.com
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I was against the CHIPS Act from the very beginning. These hugely profitable companies did not need $57 Billion in corporate welfare paid by the taxpayer to build these plants in the US. They were going to build here anyway because of the supply chain issues encountered over the last 3 years. We shouldn't have given them anything.
Now, they (TSMC) want to use our tax money to import foreign labor to complete the plant?!? (500 visas was the last count). What happened to the "job training" that the CHIPS act was touted as promoting?!? Sounds like our idiot Congress, both sides of the aisle, gave them this money without restrictions or stipulations for the use of "American labor only."
Now, they (TSMC) want to use our tax money to import foreign labor to complete the plant?!? (500 visas was the last count). What happened to the "job training" that the CHIPS act was touted as promoting?!? Sounds like our idiot Congress, both sides of the aisle, gave them this money without restrictions or stipulations for the use of "American labor only."
I think many of you missed the point. The worker shortage IS NOT for factory workers. It's a shortage of skilled specialized Contruction workers to actually build the facility. It's like needing welders and all you can find are carpenters.
This has been an issue in the US for many years.
This has been an issue in the US for many years.
That program was a farce from the very beginning. Wtf was a tax break of a couple tens of millions going to do when the capital investment to build a chip fab is Billions of dollars.
It was a giveaway to the industry with little to no actual strings attached.
"Skilled worker shortage" aka we don't pay enough to get workers to come from Intel or the other Semiconductor jobs in the area.
Read the article, please. They are not looking for semiconductor employees, they are looking for people to build the plant and set up the equipment.
Why do they want to build in these dry deserts? Frankly, anyone else can have that job. I don't work in construction (or tech/IT, for that matter) but there is no way you could convince me to live anywhere but in the mountains of Arizona. I hate heat! Camped and hiked all over the southwest, but in the fall and winter.
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If the A17 comes in “4nm”, there’s going to be drama.
I genuinely thought I was going mad reading through the comments wondering how no one caught this part of the article.
Exactly this. There was money allocated to training people. Where did that money go?
With traditional manufacturing, the initial installation phase usually requires a much larger pool of technicians than the usual day to day process does for calibrate/maintain/repair/replace. You sound like you have some familiarity with it, so how does chip manufacturing compare? Would they really need that initial large group long term?