Intel employees in clean room "bunny suits" work at Intel's D1X factory in Hillsboro, Oregon. The grand opening of D1X's "Mod3" in 2022 will provides Intel engineers with an additional 270,000 square feet of clean room space to develop next-generation silicon process technologies.
Courtesy of Intel Corporation
If Oregon wants to improve its status among the nation’s leaders in semiconductor manufacturing, it’s going to need the workforce to get there. A new study from ECONorthwest looked at the workforce gaps the state needs to fill to meet this goal. It found that Oregon’s higher education institutions, community-based organizations and industry leaders will need to work together to train the next generation of semiconductor manufacturer workers and reeducate the existing workers already in the industry.
Semiconductors are human-made materials used in almost all electronics, from simple wrist watches to advanced computers in vehicles.
The Semiconductor Workforce and Talent Assessment, commissioned by Oregon’s Higher Education Coordinating Commission, makes several recommendations to bolster jobs in the industry. A key recommendation proposes solidifying and supporting existing career pathways into the semiconductor industry, from high school apprenticeships to industry-sponsored master’s degrees.
“We found that while there are a lot of good programs going on, it’s not standardized, so programs come and go,” said Andrew Dyke, senior economist at ECONorthwest and the lead researcher for the study. “Programs address a specific need, in a specific time, but they aren’t long standing. So we recommended formalizing some of those successes.”
Among other things, the report also suggests diversifying the current semiconductor workforce and introducing more high schoolers to jobs that are available in the semiconductor industry, as well as the benefits of working in the industry.
A photo from November 2021 shows employees in cleanroom "bunny suits" working at Intel's D1X factory in Hillsboro, Oregon. The company says a D1X fab expansion due for completion in 2022 will help meet a sharply increasing global demand for semiconductors. Intel is Oregon's largest private employer.
Walden Kirsch / Courtesy of Intel Corporation
Above all, the report’s authors reiterate that educators and people already working in the industry will need to collaborate closely to fill the state’s semiconductor workforce gaps. The study called for the creation of a task force of leaders in this area as a way to kickstart collaboration.
This report comes after Congress approved a nearly $53 billion investment in the nation’s semiconductor manufacturing industry with the passage of the CHIPS Act in 2022. Oregon made a similar and significant investment of its own last year, dedicating $240 million to the state’s existing semiconductor industry.
Oregon currently has nearly 31,000 workers in the semiconductor industry, earning an average annual wage of $171,750 in 2022 — more than two and a half times the state’s overall average pay. Oregon also has the fourth largest level of semiconductor employment in the nation. And the Oregon Employment Department has forecast immense growth in jobs related to the semiconductor industry, up to 6,000 new jobs, as well 1,000 construction jobs related to semiconductors.
“The semiconductor industry is really outsized [in Oregon,] which is great, but it also presents challenges for the state as it tries to support the workforce,” said Dyke. “In Oregon we need to think more creatively about how to support any large and important industry.”
Most semiconductor jobs are concentrated in the Portland metro area and include positions such as computer programmers, mechanical engineers and technicians. Nearly all the jobs in the industry require some postsecondary education, from specialty training for a certificate all the way up to doctorate programs.
The report also recommended boosting the number of women and workers who identify as Black, Indigenous or People of Color in Oregon’s semiconductor industry. The report noted that people from these groups often fill lower wage jobs in the state’s workforce overall.