Labor Shortages: Semiconductor Engineers & Teachers

The Econonaut is about sailing thru economic waters and exploring investing opportunities. When we consider what is happening across America and the world, we often encounter fascinating circumstances..

Today’s case in point is a massive shortage of microchip/semiconductor engineers throughout the world. To learn more, we suggest you read this article from The Register. Here is a quote:

Consider the fact that Intel, for instance, is building fabs in Arizona, Ohio, and Germany. The semiconductor giant expects to create 3,000 high-tech jobs at each of these sites, at least in the first phase of the projects. That means Intel needs to find 6,000 people to fill those roles in the United States and 3,000 to take up those positions in Germany by the time these fabs go online in a few years.

The Register

The Register explains that students have long favored computer science and programming over electrical engineering but the problem doesn’t stop there.

Right now, all across America there are massive teacher shortages. In Kentucky, there is alarm over the potential of 30,000 educators to leave the profession. In Indiana, there are 2300 teacher shortages and another 900 support roles open. In Kansas, “Burnout” is cited as the reason there are 1400 teacher openings. In Missouri, they are lowering standards to get more teacher roles filled. In Michigan, the approach there is to poach out of state teachers to fill open teaching roles. In Houston, Texas the plan is to pay for alternate teacher certification and higher pay to fill 900 teaching roles. In Pennsylvania, the approach is poaching and pay.

The teacher shortage problem exists all throughout the United States. There may be a few areas that are fully staffed but that is a rare exception not the norm. With so many teacher shortages, who will teach the next generation of computer science programmers, engineers, and other professions?

Why is all of this happening? Click through the links above for each state and a common theme emerges: boomer retirements or burnout/change of profession. It doesn’t help that teaching has now become a politicized profession with political parties demanding certain curriculum be taught that would be better off set for other institutions.

To bring this full circle, the “knowledge and training” ecosystem is disintegrating before our very eyes and there is very little being done to address the problem. As 60 million boomers retire over the next decade, this problem will grow exponentially. A prudent investor would take all of this information and strategically position their portfolio to take advantage of the scenario.

In the meantime, stay tuned and stay solvent…