According to the Financial Times, TSMC’s Arizona factory in the United States plans to employ 4,500 people after it is put into production, and currently employs 2,200 people. However, according to information disclosed by two people familiar with the matter, local employees currently account for about 50%, and nearly half are expatriates from Taiwan, China.
An important reason why the proportion of local personnel is too low is that TSMC’s U.S. factories mainly hire engineering graduates as technical personnel, hoping that they can exert their subjective initiative and maximize production. But U.S. engineering graduates often have more and better options, attracted by more exciting opportunities elsewhere.
“The more skilled the fab workers are, the more power they have, but that’s not the case in the U.S.,” said Dylan Patel, principal analyst at U.S. consulting firm SemiAnalysis.
His views as follows:
It is a very good choice for employees in Taiwan, China, to join TSMC as technical staff after completing four years of engineering school. But U.S. engineering graduates “have career opportunities that pay better and are more inspiring than in fabs, like developing new lenses for Apple or working for Meta.