Finding the Construction Workers and Fab Operators

In many ways, this is excellent news for the economy of the United States.However, despite the fact that some of these projects have already begun construction, they are facing a significant obstacle:a lack of qualified workers to run the new facilities and the construction workers needed to build them.

In Arizona, where the tightest U.S. labor market in decades is taking place, TSMC and Intel are competing for scarce workers while racing to construct new fabs.TSMC’s new Arizona fab is currently being built by 6,000 construction workers. The company had planned to start installing equipment in September 2022, but due to construction delays, the date will now be moved to the first quarter of 2023.

Similar circumstances exist in Ohio, where Intel is building two new fabs near Columbus that will require 7,000 construction workers—a workforce that labor leaders and state officials insist Central Ohio lacks.The deficiency of development laborers is public in scope, driven by new chip ventures as well as by the $1.2 billion 2021 Foundation Speculation and Occupations Act, and most as of late by the $739 billion Expansion Decrease Act, prompting a “interest for a volume of development laborers that, in many business sectors, basically doesn’t exist.”