Taiwan urgently needs talent for its chips industry. Surprisingly he is looking for it in summer camps

TSMC, The biggest chips manufacturer on the planethe goes hunting again year after year to be able to meet his needs. During 2023 recruited 6,000 engineers For its Taiwan facilities, and presumably this trend also remained for 2024. And between 2025 and 2028 it will start Several semiconductor manufacturing plants In the US, Germany, Taiwan and Japan. TSMC is one of the most successful companies in this sector, but with all probability other chips designers and manufacturers will also need to strengthen their templates.

Anyway, for Taiwan, its semiconductor industry is strategic for three fundamental reasons: it represents between 13% and 15% of the gross domestic product from the country; It is the engine of its exports with a close value to 40% of the total; And finally, the production of avant -garde chips gives the country a huge relevance from a geostrategic point of view. For this reason for this Asian country it is crucial that TSMC, UMC, Foxconn, MediaTek and its other large technology companies have the workforce they need.

One of the strategies that are using some Taiwanese companies or with important businesses in Taiwan to recruit young talent is summer camps and university courses. Its purpose is to capture young people who have the right skills, although, curiously, some of these camps are held abroad for a reason for weight: The birth rate in Taiwan It goes down while, as we have seen, Taiwanese companies that are dedicated to semiconductors need to constantly increase their templates.

In Europe, 100,000 more engineers are needed

The Taiwanese government supports this strategy. It is fully aware that its main semiconductor companies, especially TSMC and UMC, need a constant supply of well -trained engineers to support their growth. Its current demand cannot be filled only with Taiwanese students, which has led to the NTU (Taiwan National University) to implement A global degree program in semiconductors that precisely seeks to attract foreign students.

In any case, the Taiwan integrated circuit industry is not at all the only one that needs to recruit new talent. During the next five years the global semiconductor industry will need to incorporate nothing less than One million qualified workers. This prognosis is no elucubration; It comes from SEMIan international organization that watches over the interests of the electronics industries and integrated circuits. According to their forecasts Europe will face a deficit of 100,000 engineers, and Asia will need 200,000 qualified technicians.

These a priori figures may seem exaggerated, but they are not at all if we consider that for 2024 the chips industry grew by 19.1% compared to 2023 thanks to the demand for GPUs for artificial intelligence (AI) and consumer electronic products, as well as to the expansion of 5G communications throughout the planet and the development of the car market. In 2024 the global semiconductor industry invoiced 627.6 billion dollars.

The problem facing semiconductor companies, According to semiis that as many people with technical profile are not being formed in universities as they will need in the short and medium term. In addition, many of the most experienced engineers are retiring or will do so before 2030. As a button shows: in the US a third of employees of integrated circuit companies You have 55 years or more. And in Germany a third of the technicians who have developed their work career in the chips industry will retire throughout the next decade. However, there is another challenge that also compromises the future of these companies: the next batch of engineers will have to have advanced skills in AI and Automatic learning.

Image | TSMC

More information | Reuters

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