WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — President Joe Biden signed the CHIPS Science Act on Aug. 9, 2022, authorizing nearly $53 billion to rebuild America’s semiconductor industry. In the two years since, semiconductor factories have broken ground from Syracuse, New York, to Phoenix, and the focus has shifted to how to hire the next generation of workers like Robert Chang.
The sophomore student was part of the Purdue University Semiconductor Awareness and Readiness Summer Training (STARS) program, an intensive eight-week program that completed its second summer session last month, with enrollment growing to 100 students from about 70 at the start.
The initiative is not directly funded by CHIPS, but aims to train several dozen undergraduate students each summer for domestic semiconductor jobs, with $10,000 in scholarships funded by industry sponsors including Intel, GlobalFoundries and Texas Instruments.
STARS “definitely prepares me and gives me good experience for future opportunities,” Zhang said during the final week of the bootcamp, where trainees work in “clean rooms” and labs and learn to design, manufacture or package their own chips — hands-on experience that’s rare outside of graduate programs or paid jobs.
Purdue’s program is one of only two-month undergraduate semiconductor programs in the U.S., and the jobs it aims to fill represent only a fraction of the projected demand in the U.S. industry.
Researchers at McKinsey & Company project that even if CHIPS programs and funding work to their full potential, the U.S. semiconductor industry will face a shortage of 59,000 workers by 2029. If they don’t, the shortfall could be as much as 146,000. The U.S. semiconductor manufacturing workforce has fallen from a peak of 714,500 in 2001 to 392,100 as of July, according to government data.
The Semiconductor Industry Association has already tallied more than $30 billion in CHIPS grants and more than $25 billion in loans distributed so far, spanning projects at semiconductor giants such as TSMC, Intel and Micron. Additionally, the CHIPS Program Office, run by the Commerce Department, announced a $5 billion package in February with a major push into research and development, including workforce skilling.
The country’s universities are being asked to triple the number of graduates pursuing careers in the semiconductor industry.
Mark Lundstrom, Chief Semiconductor Officer, Purdue University
McKinsey senior partner Bill Weissman sees little risk that new U.S. chip-making plants will “go dormant” because of a lack of workers, but he said a labor shortage could drive up costs, since operating a factory in the U.S. is already more expensive than in Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and Singapore, where most of the demand comes from.
One way to bolster the domestic talent pool is to get potential employees to express interest early, said Mark Lundstrom, Purdue University’s chief semiconductor officer.
“The country’s universities are being asked to triple the number of graduates pursuing careers in the semiconductor industry, so it takes all of us working together to make that happen,” he said, adding that many of the existing industry internships come “too late” in students’ academic lives.
Lundstrom says it’s important for undergraduates to experience parts of the semiconductor development process — metal deposition, laser cutting, wafer measurement and so on — before their junior year.
The experience will help prepare them for jobs in West Lafayette, Indiana, just around the corner from Purdue, where South Korean company SK Hynix is planning an advanced packaging facility that is expected to begin mass production in 2028, right around the time many of STARS’s participants enter the workforce: About a quarter of the program’s first class have secured internships at companies like Apple, Intel, Nvidia, and TSMC, according to Purdue.
But to fill the expected talent gap, industry will need to do more to train workers, according to Sujay Sivakumar, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Universities, nonprofits, state and local governments and private sector employees all have a role to play, he said.
High-paying jobs in U.S. semiconductor manufacturing plants could help keep the industry’s top talent from leaving overseas, Shivakumar said, adding that to do that, domestic employers need to offer competitive wages as well as child care benefits and flexible work hours.
“If they won’t come to the United States, they’ll go to other countries. Those countries are in competition with us,” he said.
To fill the gap, McKinsey researchers suggested a broader approach, including tapping immigrant communities, military veterans and workers with transferable skills in adjacent industries like pharmaceutical and auto manufacturing. The firm also recommended partnering with educational institutions, including high schools, to allow potential employees to tour semiconductor manufacturing facilities and shadow workers on-site.
“Just because a course is available doesn’t necessarily solve the problem if students don’t take it,” says Taylor Roundtree, an associate partner at McKinsey.
Lundstrom knows there’s still a long way to go and Purdue’s role is small, but the university wants to do its part. “We just felt we had a responsibility to help the country address this challenge,” he said.
