Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Although the United States and the European Union finally formulated their own "chip bills," they are ready to invest heavily in consolidating their semiconductor production capabilities to ensure strategic supply. Talent shortages will be a critical issue that needs to be addressed if countries are to ensure the effectiveness of their investments.

According to DIGITIMES, China Taiwan ranks first in the world in terms of R & D manpower per thousand people in the 2021 World Competitiveness Ranking released by the International Management Development Association (IMD). However, according to a recent survey, semiconductor engineer positions in China Taiwan averaged 35000 per month in the first quarter of 2022, up 39.8 per cent from the same period last year. According to China Taiwan job site 104.com.tw, a qualified engineer candidate gets an average of 3.4 job offers.

Milan Chang, Micron's director of talent acquisition in China Taiwan, said in the annual report www.example.com:"This is the most intense competition I have seen in 15 years! 104.com Chang believes that the talent war will continue in the next three years, and semiconductor workers in China Taiwan are in short supply due to the low birth rate.

The country manager of a foreign headhunter, who asked not to be named, told DIGITIMES Asia that they have started helping semiconductor companies in China Taiwan recruit workers from India and Southeast Asia. "In this talent war, China Taiwan has an advantage over Singapore because semiconductor wages in China Taiwan are high and prices are only a fraction of those in Singapore," the manager said.

There are 1700 semiconductor companies in the industrial supply chain in China Taiwan, including wafers, substrates and other materials, IC design companies, IC foundry manufacturers and package testing. The battle for talent is getting fiercer every year. However, it is foreign companies such as Intel, AMD, NVIDIA and Micron or multinational companies headquartered in Hong Kong such as MediaTek, TSMC and MediaTek that have the financial resources to raise wages or attract the best talent with huge bonuses.

KS Pua, founder of Qunlian Electronics, called for regulatory reforms to lower the threshold for allowing foreign talent to work in Taiwan. Pua himself is a Malaysian citizen. Later, he went to university in China Taiwan and stayed in the local area to work after graduation. Due to its relatively small size, Pua attracts talent by offering scholarships to Malaysian students to study in China Taiwan and hiring them to work in his company.

At the same time, SEMI China Taiwan President Cao Shilun pointed out that as the semiconductor industry becomes more and more complex, the lack of highly skilled engineers, such as the lack of PhDs studying the next generation of semiconductors, may affect the development of advanced technologies. But in the past decade, the number of engineering PhDs in China Taiwan has also declined rapidly.

The highest salary increase this year is for engineers in Tainan, where TSMC will set up new 7nm and 28nm fabs in Kaohsiung to attract engineers to move south.

According to market research firm TrendForce, most of the new capacity in 2022 will come from TSMC and UMC, concentrated on 28-40 nm node chips, which will be produced on 300 mm wafers. At present, OEM manufacturers in China Taiwan produce nearly 90% of advanced chips (manufactured by process technology below 10nm node) for the world.

The battle for talent is already underway in Europe. Bosch, Gexin, Infineon and Siltronic are struggling to secure a limited supply of electrical and electronic engineers near Dresden.

Bosch has just announced an investment of 3 billion euros ($3.05 billion) to expand capacity by 2026, and the EU has committed 43 billion euros in public and private investment to meet its goal of doubling its share of the global chip market to 20 percent by 2030.

A report in the German newspaper Handelsblatt quoted industry association Silicon Saxony as saying that the chip industry in the region will have about 4000 jobs per year, and by 2030, Saxony alone will need about 100000 people in the microelectronics and communications industry, 30000 more than in the region, while today at the same time, about 5000 industry experts will retire.

The battle for talent will also extend to Southeast Asia. GF celebrated the arrival of its equipment at its new US$4 billion plant in Singapore, with capacity additions planned for 2023. UMC also announced a US$5 billion investment in its Singapore campus to expand capacity.

In Malaysia, Intel's $7.1 billion 10-year investment in an assembly, testing and R & D center in Penang will compete head-to-head with the 54 OSAT service providers already operating in Malaysia. Bosch is also building a semiconductor chip and sensor end-of-the-line test center in Penang, which will begin operations in 2023. Infineon decided to invest $1.8 billion in building fab modules in Guling to improve its manufacturing capabilities in power semiconductors. The project is expected to be completed in the third quarter of 2024.

According to SEMI, 29 new fabs will be completed later this year and in 2023, including eight new fabs in the mainland of China and eight new fabs in China Taiwan in 2022. In North America, six new fabs will begin construction, while Japan and South Korea will begin construction with two new fabs each.

Although advanced fabs are highly automated and reduce labor in the manufacturing process, several roles such as process engineering, production operations, logistics, and equipment support are essential to keep the fabs running.

According to Eightfold AI's white paper estimates, 18-20 additional fabs, or about 70,000 - 90,000 fab jobs, are needed if the United States is to re-support semiconductor capacity for critical applications: "To seize this opportunity, the United States will need to increase its existing (fab) workforce by 50%." "

If demand continues to outpace supply, the massive additional capacity brought by new fabs could be sustainable. Plans to build new fabs are more likely to be shelved or cancelled if demand drops due to slowing economic growth.

While some industry experts believe that manufacturing reflow can be achieved through multiple efforts, including reshaping fabs to streamline labor and retraining talent, semiconductor companies, especially latecomers, still have to overcome talent shortages first, and then supply and demand imbalances.

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