- cross-posted to:
- news
- cross-posted to:
- news
‘They would not listen to us’: inside Arizona’s troubled $53bn chip plant::Taiwanese microchip manufacturer TSMC blames struggle to build Phoenix plant on skilled labor shortage but workers cite disorganization and safety concerns
I find it hard to believe that the US has an insufficient pool of talent available for this project. These companies just don’t want to pay what those qualified individuals demand in compensation.
Why would you believe this? The talent is specialized and most of them are already employed by the few dominant market players.
I agree with what you said, but why would the US have fewer available qualified individuals than Taiwan? We have a large population and an effective university system. I think its likely that the talent is available, but expensive.
Building microchips is really hard and Taiwan has held a practical monopoly on the industry for a while now. It’s not that the US doesn’t have educated workers, but it wouldn’t surprise me that it is hard to find many qualified to build the actual facilities to manufacture microchips - most of the US’s involvement in microchips has been designing them and then handing those designs over to Taiwan for manufacturing.
Skilled labor isn’t about having an effective University system.
It’s about having a large number of people with the experience in the sector. A sector the US largely doesn’t have. So the talent pool is very small across the entire country, never mind just Arizona.
Taiwan literally had a government intervention to launch TSMCcand developed their university system around TSMC being the crown jewel of employment, while the US has had dysfunctional support for anything STEM that succeeds in spite of itself.
It’s a small unionized labor pool. One that is already being employed to build a new fab by Intel right now. TSMC just doesn’t want to deal with reality.