Driven by their continuous moves to expand output, Taiwan’s two largest wafer foundries each announced on Saturday that they have a high demand for manpower this year.
Speaking at a job fair in Hsinchu City, Alex Wei (魏烈恆) of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said the world’s largest contract semiconductor foundry needs to recruit about 6,500 people this year to staff its expanded operations.
The demand is calculated based on the company’s plan of operations that puts its capital expenses at US$7.8 billion this year, up 31.4 percent from the previous year, and expects an increase of 20 percent of total production output, Wei said.
Photo: Wang Chin-yi, Taipei TImes
More than half of the manpower demand will come from TSMC’s production lines in the Southern Taiwan Science Park (南部科學園區) in Tainan City, he added.
At the same event, United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電) said that it requires 800 to 1,000 new employees — 80 percent of whom will be engineers — this year.
According to the company, its capital expenses for this year will reach US$1.8 billion, similar to last year’s figure, with total output likely to increase by 11 percent from last year.
The output of its 12-inch wafer production lines is expected to grow 25 percent this year, UMC said.
More than 130 companies were present at the job fair, which was held at the National Tsing Hua University campus and offered 11,000 jobs.
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