Taiwan’s semiconductor {industry} has been beneath the worldwide highlight, given its indispensable strategic significance. Analysts have spilled a substantial amount of ink on the implications of geopolitical wrangling for Taiwan’s chip {industry}, and vice-versa. Nonetheless, the Taiwanese authorities and its chip {industry} face one other vital drawback – the battle to recruit sufficient chipmakers. 

Previously three years, Taiwan’s chip {industry} has regularly struggled to search out sufficient engineers from upstream to downstream of the provision chain. In 2021, there have been 27,701 unfulfilled engineer positions within the {industry}, a couple of 44 p.c enhance in comparison with the second quarter of 2020. 

The state of affairs solely worsened in 2022. The job market reported 35,167 unfulfilled positions within the first quarter of 2022, a 40 p.c surge from the identical quarter a yr in the past. Though the international market contraction for chips from the third quarter of 2022 to the second quarter of 2023 decreased workforce demand, the expertise scarcity was right here to remain. Taiwan reported 22,820 unfulfilled engineer positions on this interval. 

Taiwan’s declining younger expertise pool presents one other critical problem for the chip {industry} to satisfy its workforce demand in opposition to the backdrop of the present labor scarcity. Previously twenty years, Taiwan has confronted a gentle discount in STEM graduates throughout each undergraduate and graduate packages. On prime of that, Taiwan is coping with the world’s lowest fertility price and an getting older inhabitants that can shrink its total expertise pool. 

Externally, Taiwan confronts intensified international competitors for semiconductor expertise as important gamers within the {industry}, together with the United States, China, South Korea, Japan, and the European Union, ramp up efforts to domesticate home expertise and appeal to overseas professionals. This international coverage sample is pushed by varied motives, together with dealing with rising expertise shortages within the {industry}, empowering home manufacturing capabilities, adapting to new geopolitical dynamics, and recognizing semiconductor’s strategic worth in right now’s world. 

For Taiwan, the hovering worldwide competitors for chipmakers exacerbates its present expertise shortages as it could trigger an outflow of Taiwanese chip professionals in search of higher alternatives and enhance the issue of drawing in prime overseas expertise.

Furthermore, the current “AI wave” is anticipated to enhance the demand for chips, particularly high-end ones utilized in AI purposes, additional underscoring the {industry}’s want for added workforce for increased productiveness. The current projection of 20 p.c annual income progress by Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC exemplified this rising demand. 

Growing Strategic Give attention to Expertise Cultivation 

Latest international coverage traits exhibit a shift towards extra government-led initiatives in cultivating expertise inside the semiconductor {industry}, and Taiwan is not any exception currently. 

In June 2020, Taiwan’s Govt Yuan introduced the “Main Enterprise Analysis and Improvement In-depth Cultivation Plan,” prioritizing core applied sciences resembling rising semiconductors, new-generation cell networks, and AI. However, this technique didn’t prioritize expertise improvement like those coming years later. As an alternative, it positioned extra give attention to overseas funding and progressive functionality. 

A yr later in 2021, the Govt Yuan launched a brand new technique – “Accelerating Future Expertise Analysis and Expertise Planning” – emphasizing the significance of addressing expertise shortages. This technique launched the “Nationwide Key Space Business-Academia Collaboration and Expertise Cultivation Innovation Act,” geared toward boosting industry-academia collaboration in semiconductors and AI. 

In contrast to the technique doc in 2020, which largely disregarded the expertise half, the 2021 technique positioned “semiconductor expertise provide” as the primary pillar. The coverage shift mirrored the federal government’s realization of the escalating expertise scarcity as a result of surging market demand from 2020. 

Because the laws handed, 9 universities have established new institutes specializing in semiconductors. This technique additionally expanded college packages in crucial areas resembling semiconductors, AI, digital engineering, and materials engineering, leading to a ten p.c enhance in undergraduate packages and a 15 p.c enhance in graduate packages.

To advance this technique, the Nationwide Science and Expertise Council (NSTC) allotted 35 billion Taiwanese {dollars} ($1.1 billion) for the “2025 Prime-Down Semiconductor Plan” to determine a number of packages to help semiconductor expertise from 2021. These packages have generated 848 grasp’s and 241 PhD-level college students, in response to the legislative briefing in 2023. Moreover, the NSTC-owned Taiwan Semiconductor Analysis Institute helps 2,100 high-level semiconductor skills yearly. 

Following these initiatives, the Taiwanese authorities doubled down on its funding to help semiconductor expertise. In November 2023, the Govt Yuan unveiled the “Chip-based Industrial Innovation Program (CBI).” The plan is anticipated to supply NT$300 billion ($10 billion) within the subsequent 10 years to mix generative AI and chip applied sciences for industrial innovation, refine the atmosphere for worldwide expertise, speed up industrial innovation, and appeal to overseas funding. 

The persisting expertise scarcity in semiconductors has undoubtedly prompted the federal government to make leaps in supporting the atmosphere to foster extra expertise for the semiconductor {industry}. Whereas these insurance policies are largely optimistic, they don’t seem to be complete sufficient to additional deal with the rising expertise want available in the market, as they overlook a number of important components to unlock extra expertise sources. As such, listed below are some coverage suggestions that the incoming Lai administration ought to ponder. 

Adopting a Nuanced Strategy

First, the federal government ought to enhance funding in pre-college schooling on semiconductors to boost college students’ understanding and foster their curiosity. This might embrace providing elective programs, visiting lectures, seminars, and academic visits concerning the chip {industry}. This method may assist college students develop an curiosity within the discipline and the potential to decide on an space of examine in school associated to semiconductors. 

There have been some preliminary efforts on this space. The Ministry of Training final yr launched experimental semiconductor programs in 5 vocational faculties. Whereas strengthening efforts to advertise chip-related programs is essential, the federal government should strike a nice steadiness by providing a various vary of elective programs to make sure the curriculum caters to college students’ assorted pursuits. 

Second, the federal government, chipmakers, and tutorial establishments should collaborate to domesticate feminine expertise for the semiconductor {industry}, an underexplored workforce. In Taiwan, feminine enrollment in engineering packages stays disproportionately low in comparison with males, one of many explanation why there are fewer feminine staff within the semiconductor {industry}. For example, feminine workers constituted solely about one-third of TSMC’s whole workforce in 2022.

To encourage extra feminine staff within the {industry}, initiatives resembling offering complete details about the semiconductor {industry} to feminine highschool and school college students can encourage their participation in associated engineering packages on the college degree and doubtlessly encourage them to decide on a profession in semiconductors. For example, main chip companies like MediaTek and TSMC initiated such efforts in collaboration with tutorial establishments to draw extra feminine expertise final yr. 

Authorities, academia, and the personal sector ought to collaborate to additional encourage feminine expertise to pursue careers in semiconductors by providing devoted scholarships, offering post-graduate hiring ensures, and enhancing the involvement of feminine college students within the discipline.

Third, the federal government ought to set up semiconductor departments in vocational excessive faculties in Taiwan to facilitate direct entry into the semiconductor {industry} post-high college schooling and domesticate a expertise pool with sturdy semiconductor fundamentals for additional schooling on the school degree. That is one other underdeveloped space for potential semiconductor expertise the place the federal government has but to take a position.

Past higher using its youthful skills, Taiwan must also spend money on upskilling and profession transition alternatives for its present workforce. For instance, the Taiwanese authorities ought to create extra well-organized chip-training establishments with potential hiring alternatives, concentrating on people who’re in search of profession modifications or presently unemployed. This technique can faucet right into a worthwhile section of the labor market by offering avenues for employment in semiconductors.  

Lastly, Taiwan should broaden the expertise pool past its nationwide borders. At present, Taiwan’s chip {industry} largely depends on home expertise, an method that can not be sustained because of the diminishing beginning price. To that finish, Taiwan ought to actively revisit and revise its immigration insurance policies to extend entry to overseas expertise and meet {industry} calls for.  Realistically, it is perhaps exhausting for the Taiwanese authorities to advance main reforms in immigration coverage, as demonstrated by the pushback in opposition to admitting extra Indian migrant staff final yr. 

The federal government ought to conjure up extra artistic and compelling measures to successfully appeal to extra overseas expertise whereas securing public help. One possibility is for the Taiwanese authorities to think about designing a “chip visa” that enables an acceptable quantity of government-approved overseas semiconductor engineers to help Taiwan’s most significant {industry}. Taiwan can contemplate international locations like India, Vietnam, and the Philippines, which are residence to numerous engineers.

The federal government must also discover alternatives to collaborate carefully with main chip companies to arrange scholarship packages and language coaching packages, together with post-graduate working alternatives in Taiwan-based semiconductor corporations, for prime graduate and undergraduate college students in Southeast Asia. Only in the near past, South Korean chip big Samsung adopted this method and signed an settlement with prime universities in Vietnam aiming to safe overseas semiconductor expertise. 

Such an method is not going to solely make sure that Taiwan can deliver extra expertise to help its {industry} however will even equip the contributors with the experience to work in Taiwan’s chip companies whereas having fun with life in Taiwan, an essential consider retaining these skills. 

Advocating for a reasonable method to draw expert overseas expertise to help Taiwan’s crucial {industry} could be extra compelling in gaining public help than proposing intensive immigration reforms, resembling large-scale migrant employee packages.

To make certain, though the federal government is chargeable for addressing the expertise scarcity, it’s essential to level out that the scarcity can also be a product of its chip {industry}’s notorious working atmosphere, tradition, and public picture. This may solely be improved by the {industry} itself.