(Bloomberg) -- The US needs “robust partnership” between top universities and private industry as it works to beef up domestic semiconductor-manufacturing capacity, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said.
“We really have to just get a lot more serious about it, and also develop new pipelines,” Raimondo said Tuesday. “The forecasts are that we’ll be about 100,000 semiconductor technicians short in the next handful of years, if we don’t do something differently. That’s a huge problem. It’s also an opportunity.”
Raimondo spoke in Washington at an event organized by Purdue University and industry groups to highlight federal investments in the semiconductor industry. Raimondo’s department is leading the way in investing about $52 billion into the US semiconductor industry, which she frames as a key national-security resource.
In a bid to bolster US technological competitiveness, the US last year enacted the Chips and Science Act to facilitate the development of semiconductor manufacturing hubs across the US and preserve the country’s technological supremacy while countering challenges from China.
The Biden administration opened applications for the manufacturing part of the funding under the act at the end of February. Congress passed the law last year after pandemic lockdowns and supply-chain disruption laid bare US reliance on chips from Asia and particularly Taiwan, the target of frequent threats from Beijing.
Tuesday’s event was attended by about a hundred of representatives from the industry, including Thomas Sonderman, president and chief executive officer of SkyWater Technology Inc., and top executives from Micron Technology Inc (NASDAQ:MU)., Intel Corp (NASDAQ:INTC). and Applied Materials Inc (NASDAQ:AMAT). Much of the discussion was about the need to train workers to meet the demands of the industry.
“Frankly, the thing that worries us most is workforce development,” Sonderman said. “If we don’t have people to get excited like we all did when we joined this industry, then it won’t succeed.”
Manish Bhatia, executive vice president of global operations at Micron, said that the biggest challenge for the company is to be able to manufacture memory chips in North America at scale to be cost competitive in a cost-sensitive business, with the needed workforce in everything from construction to equipment operation.
Ajit Manocha, president of industry association SEMI, said one frequently-used estimate of 300,000 workers needed by 2030 understates the problem. He said that in the US, it may require 500,000 or 600,000 more people in the chip manufacturing industry to achieve success.
“You have all the money, but if you don’t have the people, it’s not going to work.”
Manocha said that the US also needs to change its immigration policies to keep in the country more of the engineers and advanced degree graduates who come from other countries to study advanced degrees.
“At the end of the day, sustaining this advantage comes back to research and development, and workforce,” Raimondo said.
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