For example, at the beginning of 2023, TSMC, the world’s largest chip maker, began construction on a third chip fabrication plant near Phoenix, AZ. TSMC’s three Arizona plants have represented flagship projects for the CHIPS Act. The TSMC project stalled, however, and the company announced it had pushed back its completion date to 2025 due to problems finding skilled labor.
It takes two to three years of construction, a year or more for equipment installation and ramp-up, and more than $20 billion to build some leading-edge facilities, according to McKinsey. And each phase involved in getting a fab up and running requires different types of talent in varying numbers. Construction craft laborers are essential to the building phase, while engineers and technicians are required to design and set up equipment and process lines during the final phases of construction.
Once operations are under way, engineers and technicians are needed to fill roles in several areas: manufacturing, integration and yield, central labs, facilities, quality assurance, product management, industrial engineering, and more. A leading-edge fab with a capacity of 20,000 to 45,000 wafers per month, for example, would employ between 1,100 and 1,350 engineers and about 950 to 1,200 technicians.
