But those subsidies, as well as new tax credits for the chip industry, were finally sent to Biden’s office in late July. Intel isn’t the only company promising to ramp up U.S. projects once the money arrives — Samsung, for example, suggests it will expand its new $17 billion chip factory outside of Austin, Texas, to nearly $200 billion in investment. Lawmakers are already touting the subsidy as a major step toward the American renaissance in high-tech manufacturing.
But quietly, many of these same lawmakers — along with industry lobbyists and national security experts — fear that all of the world’s chip subsidies will collapse without enough highly skilled STEM workers. They accuse Congress of failing to seize many opportunities to address the problem.
STEM help needed
In Columbus, just miles from Johnstown Square where Intel operates, most officials don’t utter words: The tech workers who need to staff two, let alone eight, microchip factories aren’t in the area at the required levels.
“We will need a STEM workforce,” admitted John Hested, Ohio’s Republican deputy governor.
But Husted and others say they are optimistic that the network of higher education institutions spread across Columbus — including Ohio State University and Columbus State Community College — can rapidly boost the region’s workforce.
“I feel like we were built for this,” said David Harrison, president of Columbus State Community College. He highlighted the repeated refrain from Intel officials that 70 percent of the 3,000 jobs needed to fill the first manufacturers would be “technical-level” jobs that required two-year college degrees. “These are our jobs,” Harrison said.
However, Harrison is concerned about how quickly he and other leaders in higher education can be expected to persuade thousands of students to enroll in in-demand STEM courses and join Intel after graduation. The first two plants are due to be operating at full capacity within three years, and will need large numbers of workers long before that. He said his university still lacks the infrastructure to teach about chip manufacturing — “we’re missing some chip processing, clean rooms, those kinds of things” — and explained that funding recently Provided by Intel and the National Science Foundation It will not be enough. Columbus will need more support from Washington.
“I don’t know there’s a great Plan B right now,” Harrison said, adding that new facilities would run into “tens of millions.”
The lack of indigenous STEM talent is not unique to the Columbus area. Across the country, particularly in areas where the chip industry plans to relocate, officials are concerned about a perceived shortage of skilled technicians. In February, the Taiwanese semiconductor manufacturing company He cited a shortage of skilled workers upon announcing a six-month delay in the date of moving to their new plant in Arizona.
“Whether it’s a licensing program, a two-year program, or a Ph.D., at all levels, there is a shortage of high-tech STEM talent,” Phillips said. The NSB member highlighted the “missing millions of people who don’t go into STEM fields—and who are basically shut down, even from kindergarten to high school, because they’re not exposed in a way that attracts them to the field.”
Industry groups such as the National Association of Manufacturers have long argued that a two-pronged approach is necessary when it comes to high-tech sector employment: reassess immigration policy while investing heavily in workforce development.
The abandoned House and Senate rivalry bills contained provisions that would boost federal support for STEM education and training. Among other things, a House bill would have expanded Bill Grant’s eligibility for students pursuing apprenticeship programs.
“For decades we have incentivized the acquisition of a degree, not necessarily the acquisition of skills,” said Robin Borstling, Vice President of Infrastructure, Innovation and Human Resource Policy at the Non-Aligned Movement. “There are manufacturing jobs today that can be filled with six weeks of training, six months, or six years; we need all of the above.”
But those provisions were rescinded, after Senate leadership decided that an inter-house conference on bills was too difficult to reach agreement before the August recess.
Katie Spaker, managing director of government affairs for the National Skills Alliance, said Bill Grant’s abandoned expansion shows that Congress “has not responded to workers’ needs the way we need to.” Amid criticism that the current workforce development system is impractical and ineffective, the decision to scrap new promotions is a continuation of the trend of not investing in workers hoping to obtain the skills they need to meet employer demand.
“And it becomes an issue that gets worse with time,” Spaker said. “As technology changes, people need to change and develop their skills.”
“If we don’t have people skills now, we won’t have people who will be able to develop and skill in the next generation of manufacturing that we will do five years from now.”
Congress finally sent the Chips and Smaller Science Act — which includes chip subsidies and tax credits, $200 million to develop a microchip workforce and a suite of research and development provisions — to the president’s office in late July. The bill is expected to strengthen the local STEM pool (at the margins at least). But it probably falls short of the generational investment that many believe is necessary.
“You can make some impact on it in six years,” Phillips said. But if you really want to fix the problem, it’s more like a 20-year investment. And the ability of this country to invest in anything for 20 years is not a phenomenon.”
Immigration arms race
The microchip industry is in the midst of a global reshuffle that is set to last a better part of a decade — and the US isn’t the only country rolling out the red carpet. Europe, Canada, Japan and other regions are also concerned about their security, and are preparing sweeteners for microchip companies to set up shops on their borders. Bringing an effective STEM workforce together in a short time frame will be key to persuading companies to choose America instead.
That would be a challenge at the level of the technician, who represents about 70 percent of workers in most microchip factories. But these jobs only require two-year degrees—and over six years, continued education and recruitment efforts could produce enough STEM workers to keep the lights on.
It’s an entirely different story for doctorates and masters degrees, which take longer to earn and which industry representatives say make up a smaller but crucial component of the factory workforce.
About 15 percent of factory workers should have a doctorate or master’s degree in fields such as materials, electrical engineering, computer science, physics and chemistry, said Gabriela Gonzalez, head of global STEM research, policy and initiatives at Intel. Students leaving US universities with these degrees are largely foreign nationals — and increasingly are graduating without an immigration status that would allow them to work in the United States, and without a clear path to achieving that status.
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