As AI companies suggest slowing the pace of model development due to concerns about the rapid and frightening advances in technology, other issues on the hardware side of the industry may be forcing a slowdown in model development.
Human labor is at the heart of the world’s ability to manufacture enough chips to power artificial intelligence, and the United States currently faces a shortage of up to 157,000 semiconductor workers by 2030, according to a new report from McKinsey & SEMI Foundation.
“We’re concerned,” John Taylor, vice president of Samsung’s semiconductor division in Austin, Texas, said in an interview with CNBC. “I don’t think there’s enough technical talent in the pipeline.”
According to McKinsey, only 3% of U.S. graduates enter the semiconductor industry in engineering jobs each year, and 73% of chip employers report that engineering jobs are extremely difficult to fill.
Engineers and skilled technicians are critical as the United States embarks on the fastest chip manufacturing ramp-up in history in the race to produce enough memory and logic processors to power AI. Taiwan semiconductor manufacturing company and intel is currently rolling out advanced logic chips from a new manufacturing facility, or fab, in Arizona.
Samsung will become the next chipmaker to make advanced logic in the United States when the South Korean company begins production at the first of two new fabs in Taylor, Texas, later this year. It’s part of a $35 billion construction plan in the state, and Samsung said the two new factories are expected to create about 3,500 jobs.
“We’re hiring engineers, technicians and supply chain talent,” Taylor said. “Everyone wants and needs the same things. Everything is starting to go online now, so it’s a race against time.”
America is the birthplace of semiconductors and a world leader in chip design, but for decades, nearly all advanced chips have been manufactured in Asia. That’s where our talent pipeline is strongest, and that’s why we’re based in Idaho. micron conducted a rapid recruitment drive at a South Korean technical university, interviewing students and offering them full-time positions at factories in Asia, all in one day.
This is a potential silver lining for U.S. college students who are seeing fewer software engineering roles and more uncertainty in the job market due to AI. Schools such as Purdue University and Arizona State University are spending millions of dollars to launch programs to prepare U.S. students for tipping roles.
“We are already the world’s largest producer of college graduates for Intel, and we aim to be that for TSMC,” ASU President Michael Crow told CNBC.
Samsung’s advanced logic chip factory in Taylor, Texas, photographed in July 2026.
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Still, tipping jobs in the United States often pay much less than in countries like South Korea, where tipped workers are highly sought after in the marriage market. Their roles often involved grueling 12-hour shifts, but their bonuses ballooned to more than $500,000 as thousands of workers threatened strikes at Micron, Samsung and SK Hynix.
Salaries in the U.S. typically range from $127,000 to $187,000, and can exceed $238,000 for senior positions in the industry, according to the SEMI Foundation.
“As people continue to evolve their skills, we’re going to have to pay them higher salaries,” Crowe said. “Especially as companies continue to expand and there is a huge demand for employees.”
Dispatch of personnel to a memory factory in the United States
All major memory manufacturers are in particularly high demand for workers and are racing to add capacity amid a global shortage. Nvidia and advanced micro device We are rushing to secure supplies.
The center of the expansion is South Korea, where CNBC has an exclusive first look at the world’s largest memory campus, which SK Hynix will begin bringing online in February.
Micron, which currently manufactures all of its advanced memory in Asia, is building its first U.S. advanced memory factory in Boise, Idaho, scheduled to open next year, and another in Clay, New York.
SK Hynix is also building its first U.S. facility at Purdue Research Park in West Lafayette, Indiana, but the $4 billion factory will be aimed at packaging memory chips rather than front-end manufacturing. Still, SK Hynix and Micron will likely compete for a small number of U.S. memory chip workers.
“Based on our collaboration with the local community, we will be able to secure a large number of high-quality employees within the next few years,” SK Hynix CEO Kwak No-joon told CNBC at a groundbreaking ceremony in Indiana. “That’s a really serious issue.”
SK Hynix is in talks with Intel to manufacture memory chips in the United States for the first time, according to a Reuters report on Wednesday. In one scenario, SK Hynix would lease part of Intel’s semiconductor manufacturing facility in Ohio, Reuters reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
At a Micron event in July, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick urged SK Hynix and Samsung to build front-end memory fabs in the United States. Taylor said these decisions at Samsung are not up to him.
“I’m still going to have to find all the resources to run the factory, whether it’s memory or logic,” Taylor said.
Samsung and SK Hynix both told CNBC that they would temporarily bring in workers from South Korea to help set up new factories in the United States. Samsung followed a similar move by TSMC, which was building its first Arizona factory in 2021, by sending U.S. employees to their home country for several months for on-the-job training.
“If you look at where advanced technology currently exists, it’s in Asia,” Taylor said. “Our Korean colleagues are here to help us set up this equipment, which we don’t have much experience with.”
ASMLan advanced European chip equipment manufacturer, recently launched a US-based training center to help.
Creating a pipeline
Skilled semiconductor chip workers are concentrated overseas, but attracting foreign talent on H-1B visas is an expensive and cumbersome process. The long-term plan, the chipmaker told CNBC, is to build a domestic talent pipeline.
Universities in Taiwan and South Korea have graduate schools and departments specializing in semiconductor education. Although it is not yet widespread, some schools in the United States are starting practical training programs after large investments from semiconductor companies.
Purdue University will launch a series of semiconductor degrees in 2022, with approximately 2,500 students enrolled in chip-related courses each semester. Purdue’s Burke Nanotechnology Center trains students on chip equipment similar to what students can work on at the nearby SK Hynix factory.
“If you want young people to be exceptionally prepared in the field of semiconductors, this is the only place they can come right now who actually have a degree in that field,” Mitch Daniels, Purdue’s interim president and former Indiana governor, told CNBC. “And our job fairs are always fully booked.”
Purdue University’s Burke Nanotechnology Center in West Lafayette, Indiana, trains students in advanced chip equipment to help prepare them for a new semiconductor degree.
alex bedoya
Meanwhile, ASU has renovated an old Motorola factory into a Macro Technology Works clean room and installed a new center with $200 million in aid from the chip equipment maker. applied materials. TSMC also runs a technician program at ASU, which guarantees an interview upon completion.
TSMC told CNBC it visited about a dozen universities last year and plans to offer high-level jobs to many of its hundreds of interns to fill about 6,000 roles at its first three factories in Arizona.
Intel launched an apprenticeship program in Arizona in 2024, providing $50 million in scholarships to more than 80 educational institutions in Ohio near the factory being built there. Intel is also introducing a broader semiconductor education pathway program starting at the K-12 level in 2025.
Samsung is getting ahead of the talent shortage with a workforce development program launched in 2023, with multimillion-dollar donations to the University of Texas, Texas A&M, and the University of Illinois, each offering new chip engineering programs. Last year, we also donated $1 million to help launch a new technology lab at Taylor High School, which hosts more than 100 interns each year.
Federal assistance can also help. Since the CHIPS Act of 2022 was passed, more than 80 community colleges have launched or expanded semiconductor programs, thanks in part to $200 million in federal funds aimed at building the nation’s chip workforce.
“If we don’t move faster and more aggressively than we have in the past, we will lose,” Daniels said. “And we can’t put that on the record.”
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