The semiconductor industry needs talent - India is the answer

By 2030, more than one million additional skilled workers will be needed to meet demand in the semiconductor industry. As the competition for talent gets tighter, how can companies address the semiconductor worker shortage? 

In 2021, the global semiconductor industry had revenues of just over $550 billion, and this is expected to rise by over 80% to more than a trillion dollars in 2030. As a result, more than one million additional skilled workers will be needed by 2030, equating to more than 100,000 annually. But we are still far from meeting this rate. For context, fewer than 100,000 graduate students have enrolled in electrical engineering and computer science in the United States annually.

A talent boost is required to achieve and support that growth. Numerous skills are needed to grow the semiconductor ecosystem over the next decade. Globally, we will need tens of thousands of skilled tradespeople to build new plants to increase and localize manufacturing capacity:

• Thousands more graduate electrical engineers design chips and the tools that make the chips.
• More engineers of various kinds in the fabs.

Each job group has specific training and educational needs; however, the number of students in semiconductor-focused programs (undergraduates in semiconductor design and fabrication) has yet to grow. 

The chip industry has long partnered with universities and engineering schools. However, in the future, they also need to work more with local semiconductor training institutes (like vlsideepdive) and other organizations.

The ability to identify, recruit, and develop the necessary workforce cannot rely on how companies have operated historically. Instead, they need to build new talent pools in new locations, leveraging educational and private partnerships as never before. The speed at which growth is expected and the changing skills and capabilities required demand new ways of defining and implementing innovative talent access strategies. Organizations must also understand the gap between their current capabilities and future requirements to determine the talent access strategies that will meet their long-term needs.

India specifically has a role to play here. India has the world's most significant number of engineering graduates graduating yearly. If we mentor these graduates properly, we can address the world's semiconductor talent needs. I want to see India being the powerhouse of semiconductor talent in the next 10 years.