Taiwan’s semiconductor industry has been aggressively recruiting talent this year, with its demand for workers in the second quarter rising more than 44 percent from a year earlier, Web site 104 Job Bank (104人力銀行) has said.
The industry is worth NT$3 trillion (US$107.9 billion).
In a white paper on the semiconductor industry’s workforce, 104 Job Bank said that Taiwan-based semiconductor companies averaged 27,701 job openings per month from April to June, the most in six-and-a-half years.
Photo: Tsai Shu-yuan, Taipei Times
That was an increase of 44.4 percent compared with the second quarter of last year and was the fourth consecutive quarter in which the figure rose.
104 Job Bank said that while the global economy has been hurt by COVID-19, Taiwan’s semiconductor industry has benefited from strong demand for emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, 5G applications and the Internet of Things, and continued to grow.
The booming stay-at-home economy, including the rising popularity of online learning and remote work, has also boosted demand for semiconductors, driving the need for more workers, 104 Job Bank said.
Within the semiconductor industry, the IC manufacturing sector saw the monthly average of its job openings in the second quarter grow 55.3 percent from a year earlier, it said.
This compares with 51.2 percent for the IC packaging and testing sector, and 40.8 percent for the IC design sector, it said.
IC engineers accounted for about 55 percent of the job openings advertised in the semiconductor industry per month on average, 104 Job Bank said.
Despite the growing demand, the average monthly wage in the semiconductor industry fell NT$195 (US$7), or 0.4 percent from a year earlier, to NT$52,483 in the second quarter, trailing the computer and consumer electronics industry’s NT$54,640, it said.
The IC design segment offered an average monthly wage of NT$67,834, compared with NT$56,190 in the IC manufacturing segment, and NT$47,014 in the IC packaging and testing segment.
The average pay, including bonuses, in the local semiconductor industry was NT$1.7 million, lower than the NT$2 million to NT$3.5 million seen in the US, Singapore and Japan, 104 Job Bank said.
AI TREND: TSMC has been rapidly expanding capacity to meet a spike in demand for advanced packaging services, but still expects supplies to be tight for 18 months Arizona is in talks with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) about advanced chip packaging, state Governor Katie Hobbs said yesterday, which is crucial for the manufacturing of artificial intelligence (AI) chips. TSMC, which is building a US$40 billion chip factory in the US state, has not announced plans to build facilities for advanced chip packaging in the US. Advanced packaging processes stitch multiple chips together into a single device, lowering the added cost of more powerful computing. “Part of our efforts at building the semiconductor ecosystem is focusing on advanced packaging, so we have several things in the works around that
NXP Semiconductors NV expects its first automotive-grade 5-nanometer chip built by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) to become available for automakers within one-and-a-half years at the earliest, following demand for better computing performance and energy efficiency for connected vehicles, a company executive said yesterday. That would mean a significant upgrade from the 16-nanometer technology NXP adopted in its existing series of microprocessors. NXP chief technology executive Lars Reger made the remarks during a media briefing yesterday in Taipei. The latest updates came after NXP unveiled its plan to source 5-nanometer capacity from TSMC in 2021. This is Reger’s first trip to
Tailwinds: Blockbuster earnings at Nvidia Corp have sparked hopes of a tech sector boom; Taiwanese chipmakers are hopeful benefits will come to them too The worst could be over for the New Taiwan dollar as China’s economic recovery and a rebound in the chip industry will support the beleaguered currency, analysts said. The NT dollar is on course to weaken for a sixth month, the longest stretch since 2006, after foreign funds turned sour on its technology sector and risk sentiment deteriorated on slower growth in China. The tide seems to be turning now on nascent signs of stabilization in China’s economy — its biggest trading partner — following policy boosts. The yuan emerged as the best-performing Asian currency last week, followed by the Japanese yen
The European Commission’s digital chief yesterday said that murky Chinese laws were fueling concerns among foreign firms in the country, following discussions with Beijing officials about critical areas such as artificial intelligence (AI) and data governance. Vera Jourova, who is also the commission’s vice president, made the comments after meeting on Monday with Chinese counterparts including Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing (張國清) in the second “High-level Digital Dialogue” between the two sides. Among the concerns Jourova said she had heard about from European businesses in China was the “unpredictability of the decisions and interpretation of the laws by the regulators.” Beijing has recently implemented