Chip plants will need 157,000 more people than America can currently train

The United States is building semiconductor plants faster than it is building semiconductor workers. McKinsey, in work for the SEMI Foundation, now estimates a shortfall of up to 157,000 people by 2030. Arizona, Texas, Idaho, New York, and Indiana are competing for the same thin pool of process technicians and equipment engineers.

Samsung’s two Taylor fabs, part of a $35 billion commitment, are expected to create roughly 3,500 jobs. The company is still flying in South Korean experts to commission tools. Micron and SK Hynix face the same constraint. Only about 3 percent of American engineering graduates choose chips in a given year. The rest of the industry is learning, slowly, that a cleanroom without a night-shift technician is just expensive real estate.

The payback on these plants depends on the yield ramp, and the yield ramp depends on whether the night shift exists.