A shortage of skilled labor could hamper plans by computer chipmakers to expand production and address the ongoing global semiconductor shortage.

A report in the Wall Street Journal Sunday said the world’s largest chipmakers are becoming worried about a dwindling supply of skilled workers in the industry, leaving them to fight for what little talent is available. They say the problem has been worsened by broader labor shortages elsewhere, as well as an uptick in demand for electronics and a race by governments to boost their chipmaking capabilities.

ASML Holding N.V. Executive Vice President Jim Koonmen told the Journal the industry is currently “in a war for talent.”

While computer chip fabs are highly automated environments, they still require hundreds of highly skilled workers to operate the fancy machinery that’s used in the semiconductor manufacturing process. Chipmakers also employ thousands of skilled researchers.

Now they’re scrambling to expand their fabrication footprints worldwide to address global chip supply issues. The world’s biggest manufacturers, including Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and others have all pledged major expansions.

The problem they face is that boosting production capabilities requires more skilled labor. As the Journal reports, the U.S. chipmaking industry will need to add between 70,000 and 90,000 new workers in the sector by 2025 to meet its expansion goals.

“The U.S. labor market in my mind is probably for us the most competitive labor market,” said GlobalFoundries Inc. Chief Financial Officer David Reeder. He added he expects the silicon job market to remain tight for several years.

Analyst Charles King of Pund-IT Inc. told SiliconANGLE there are multiple reasons for the chipmaking talent shortage in the U.S., including a broader lack of focus on manufacturing over the past couple of decades. He said the trend of offshoring what were once well paid, highly skilled manufacturing positions may have helped businesses to boost their profits, but it has also had the negative impact of cultivating a “cultural dismissal” of even skilled manual labor as a dead-end job that ambitious job seekers should avoid.

“There’s also a generational point to the shortage here in the U.S,” King added. “With “software eating the world” tech-focused college kids see silicon- and hardware-related careers as less dynamic and interesting options compared to working as developers and software architects.”

King said there’s no easy way to fix the talent shortage systematically.

“Shorter term fixes include vendors hiring foreign-born engineers but the legacy of anti-immigration attitudes and legislation driven by the Trump administration and current tensions between the U.S. and China make that approach more complicated than it once was,” he explained. “That said, over the next 12-36 months, I expect to see a vendors employing a wide variety of possible solutions.”

Holger Mueller of Constellation Research Inc. agreed, saying the U.S. faces “quite a challenge” in making engineering seem sexy again. “In the short-term, the U.S. will only be able to realize its domestic computer chip ambitions with special immigration visa and recruitment,” he said.

Such a strategy will be difficult though, not least because other countries face similar problems. For example, the Journal reported that Taiwan’s semiconductor industry recruitment gap is at its highest level now in more than six years, threatening its status at the forefront of chip production.

The report adds that China is also looking to expand its chipmaking prowess and faces similar obstacles, with a shortage of about 250,000 silicon engineers in 2020.

Photo: IBM Research/Flickr