By Hendrik Bourgeois, Vice-President Government Affairs, Europe
If we don’t invest in skills, our EU Chips Act will build nothing but “cathedrals in the desert”. Lucilla Sioli, Director for Artificial Intelligence and Digital Industry in the European Commission’s department of Communications and Technology (DG CNECT) issued this warning last month during a workshop on bridging the skills gap in the semiconductor industry. I could not agree more, and this is the message I echoed in yesterday’s International Centre for Migration Policy Development conference in Vienna. Of course, this is not just a problem of the semiconductor industry; the shortage of digital skills affects the whole EU economy. To stay relevant and competitive in the digital economy of the future, an EU labor force of the future must be created and enabled.
According to a 2021 Eurostat report[1], a staggering 44% of Europeans in productive age lack even basic digital skills. Given that our future economy will require 9 in 10 workers to have these skills, this is a big problem. Not tomorrow’s problem – today’s problem. Take the semiconductor industry. Deloitte estimated in a 2021 report that to meet the growing demand for chips, the semiconductor industry needs to add 100,000 new jobs every year, globally[2]. And this is a fortiori the case for the EU. Otherwise, there won’t be enough qualified workers to staff all the new fabrication plants and other chip facilities springing from the EU Chips Act, and also from incentives and grants that EU member states provide to investors like Intel.
So how do we turn the desert into an oasis? With a concerted action by government, industry, and academia – the ‘triple helix’ so to say. Governments provide the funding and the policy, legislative and regulatory framework, academia the ideas and the training, and industry the opportunities, facilities, and know-how. The good news is that every part of the helix understands the urgency and need for action. The action plans are written, and our ambitions are laid out clearly in front of us. But paper is patient. What we need to do now is to take our ambition from paper to practice.
The opportunity to do so is in front of us. The EU named 2023 the ‘European Year of Skills,’ raising awareness about skills shortages and promoting programs to address them. More and more universities are adding microelectronics degrees to their curricula. In Germany, Magdeburg’s Otto-von-Guericke-University launched a course in Advanced Semiconductor Nanotechnologies and started a study program that will enable graduates to work in the semiconductor industry, supporting the planned Intel fab in Magdeburg.
But while university graduates are of course crucial to our industry, we must not forget that 6 out of 10 workers at a fab are technicians. That is why at Intel, we are working with educators and learners already in elementary schools. Through the Intel® Skills for Innovation Initiative, we are helping teachers harness the full potential of digital technologies to maximize their pupil’s learning outcomes – and start preparing them for a technology-dominated world from an early age. But we can only do this thanks to the support of cooperation with not only schools but also local and national governments.
That brings me to a final point where private and public partners still have a way to go – and that’s skilled labor migration, because training and educating domestic talent will not suffice. Political concerns have led to unwieldy migration, visa, and working permit rules, leaving companies like ours to miss out on global talent and opportunities to train our own people. Ramping fabs in Germany, for example, requires that we send a number of German employees to the U.S. or other Intel sites across the world to gain the skills they will need to successfully launch the German fab – essential intracompany transfers of talented engineers without which we simply cannot deliver on Europe’s chips ambitions. Or what to think about the gaps in existing visa rules. Frequently employees with an apprenticeship, learning a key trade for our industry, are ineligible for a visa – and there is no way we can find, train, or re-skill enough local candidates for the jobs available in our fabs.
Bringing global talent to our plants is a marathon, with grueling procedures and endless paperwork to be filled out – all the while facing antiquated and burdensome local requirements. Taking the ambitions on skills development to the next level and opening Europe to the best and brightest from across the globe, could prove to be the real catalyst in returning leading-edge chip manufacturing back to our shores. But not only that. With a population that is growing older, labor markets that are not sufficiently dynamic, and the trend of de-industrialization, the EU risks being at the receiving end of globalization if it does not bring forward modern, flexible, and digitized labor migration procedures.
Bringing the triple-helix cooperation to an industrial scale is crucial for bridging the skills gap, and leveraging its joint power can set us up for global success. We all have a role to play, and we must play as a team. Only when working together can we build these new cathedrals in bustling cities and fill them with a crowd full of dreams and ideas – ready to take on the world.
[1] https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/digital-skills-gap-europe
[2] https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/technology/articles/global-semiconductor-talent-shortage.html
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