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So, I've been reading a lot of hot takes about the 2024 election. I imagine we all have, since we're (generally) political junkies here. There's one take, though, that I've seen a number of times that I think I disagree with. Here's one expression of it:

For the past three-plus years, the Biden administration tailored economic policy to blue-collar union workers including making historic investments in green-energy and microchip manufacturing and supporting tax relief for families with young children. Biden walked the picket-line with striking autoworkers. And Biden and Harris pushed tax hikes on the super rich and corporations and savings for the middle-class through measures to lower prescription drug costs.

But the Biden-Harris sweeping economic agenda − which includes projects that are a decade out − failed to connect with working-class Americans' immediate concerns about inflation and high consumer costs.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elect...

The general idea is that the Biden agenda was really tailored to working-class voters - that the Democrats were doing a good job in centering the needs of that group. Thus, the reason they lost is either: i) inflation swamped it all; or ii) workers didn't realize how awesome the Democrats were for them.

There's a lot to support the claim that inflation doomed the Democrats no matter what they did - but I really want to interrogate the idea that the Democratic agenda was supportive of working class voters. I'm not sure it was. Just like Donald Trump has been lampooned as a "poor man's idea of what a rich man is like," I think the Democratic achievements may be a "college-educated man's idea of what a working man wants."

I don't think the working class wanted "historic investments in green-energy." Fighting climate change generally ranks towards the bottom of voter preferences, and I'm confident there's an education skew in what support it does have. Investments in new technologies often are also both disruptive and delayed - which makes them less useful for remedying current problems that the working class was upset about in 2022.

My question for 1pg relates to that. Democrats have been citing the CHIPS Act as evidence of them actually delivering for the working class, since it is bringing semiconductor manufacturing jobs back to the US. But your reference to workers in such plants having engineering degrees made me wonder if this is not, in fact, an example of Democrats delivering for the working class but instead an instance of them completely missing the mark. If you generally need an engineering degree to work in a semiconductor fab, then this is not something that's helping those without a college education, but another example of Democratic policy favoring those with degrees. While economic strife can hit anyone, especially in a time of rising inflation, I'm not sure "college graduates with engineering degrees" was a group that was experiencing greater-than-typical problems or needed to be prioritized for help at any point in the last four years.

Do these facilities hire a lot of non-college educated folks? Or are they mostly places where a college degree is generally a pre-requisite for applying?

Not 1PG, but...
There is a pretty substantial construction expense up front which could be considered working class.

Today, these factories are mostly automated.
A large part of the staff would be considered "technicians" rather than engineers doing routine maintenance tasks on the machines. These folks would typically have a two year degree.

There will also be support staff doing things like planning, HR, finance, etc... but I think most of these positions will require a four year degree.

Finally a group of engineers doing more detailed problem solving, but they would likely be significantly outnumbered by the above.

The reason for the chips act is national defense. Chips are required for the military, and production is currently concentrated to Taiwan.
All else is just excuse and marketing.

Do these facilities hire a lot of non-college educated folks? Or are they mostly places where a college degree is generally a pre-requisite for applying?

I worked in the industry for ~14 years. There is a mix of degree requirements, but here is an entry-level fab tech job:

https://jobs.intel.com/en/job/albuquerque/new-mexi...

A college degree isn’t an absolute requirement, but some kind of technical training is.

The reason for the chips act is national defense. Chips are required for the military, and production is currently concentrated to Taiwan.
All else is just excuse and marketing.

This. The CHIPS Act is about sourcing of semiconductors in the US as a block to China.

Covid highlighted how fragile the supply chain for not only high-end microprocessors like Intel i9’s or Apple M-series, but also for simple things like LED drivers and motor controllers, which are produced in the hundreds of billions per year. You need that stuff just as much if not more.

First, a comment about "green energy investments". I read a few articles that this was creating a lot of new jobs that didn't exist before. So, even if climate change isn't a priority, there is the side benefit of lots of new jobs.

The answer to your question is a bit mixed, and also company-dependent. I never worked at Intel, but it is my understanding that you had to have an associate's degree (2-yr) to work in their fabs. I will defer to someone from Intel if they say otherwise. For my company, that was not a requirement. However, you had to take an intelligence test to indicate you could be trained to work the machines. Evidently, a lot of people failed that test (and it wasn't that difficult). The machinery is complicated, and expensive, and dangerous (in some cases), so there is a fair amount of training.

But, no, you generally don't need college to apply for most of the production jobs (except Intel, so I'm told). In fact, in my company, you could work up. I knew several people that started as production, and eventually worked their way up to "techs". One even was promoted to "engineer", never having gone to college.** I'm not sure about the office workers (people forget about those!), but I suspect not for them, either. You did need college (generally) for an engineering job.




**I put them in quotes to distinguish job titles from formal degrees. We had "operators", technician 1, 2, and 3, and a few levels of "engineer", then "manager" and up.

The reason for the chips act is national defense. Chips are required for the military, and production is currently concentrated to Taiwan.
All else is just excuse and marketing.

Yes, national defense (and some level of economic defense) is certainly an important reason for wanting to have domestic production of certain key industries. But if the CHIPS Act isn't on the board for Democratic achievements to help the non-college "working class" voters, it further undercuts the Democratic argument that their record centered the priorities of those folks.

Found this article, referencing a study of the semiconductor industry:

The industry and Oxford analysis found that about 20% of people employed in the semiconductor industry have not attended college, 15% have some college experience, 9% have an associate degree and 56% have a bachelor’s or graduate degree.

And although the report said that "workers consistently earn more than the U.S. average at all education attainment levels," the report indicates that to earn the amount Biden claims, workers need an undergraduate or graduate degree.

https://www.statesman.com/story/news/politics/poli...

Which kind of tracks what I intuited about the CHIPS Act. It "in-sources" manufacturing jobs again, but these really aren't the type of manufacturing jobs that the non-college working class would be expected to ask the Democrats to focus on. These generally aren't the "shower after work, not before work" jobs that are used to illustrate the difference between blue collar jobs and others. If the majority of those working in the industry have an undergraduate degree or higher, this isn't a "populist" measure that centers working class voters as much as they might like.

Which kind of tracks what I intuited about the CHIPS Act. It "in-sources" manufacturing jobs again, but these really aren't the type of manufacturing jobs that the non-college working class would be expected to ask the Democrats to focus on. These generally aren't the "shower after work, not before work" jobs that are used to illustrate the difference between blue collar jobs and others. If the majority of those working in the industry have an undergraduate degree or higher, this isn't a "populist" measure that centers working class voters as much as they might like.


Yes, and their push for EVs actually is...potentially costing blue collar jobs in places like engine plants.

The CHIPS Act is about sourcing of semiconductors in the US as a block to China.

Covid highlighted how fragile the supply chain for not only high-end microprocessors like Intel i9’s or Apple M-series, but also for simple things like LED drivers and motor controllers, which are produced in the hundreds of billions per year. You need that stuff just as much if not more.

Sure. I don't think anyone denied that. In fact, you could argue easily that you don't even need to go as high as LED drivers. How about resistors? Capacitors? All the other bits that occupy a printed circuit board. Probably cost a few cents each, but they are critical. Strategically, we need to be able to produce everything from face masks (learned that during COVID!), to resistors, to steel for construction, to CPUs. Pretty much any and everything.

Jobs are an inevitable consequence of a policy like that, and easier to sell to low information voters (which most voters are).

A key difference is high end semiconductors are now about 5 years from greenfield to production output while many of the others could be up and running in less than a year.

As an addendum to albabys thoughts, the chips act does include funding for training.
Alan

First, a comment about "green energy investments". I read a few articles that this was creating a lot of new jobs that didn't exist before. So, even if climate change isn't a priority, there is the side benefit of lots of new jobs.

Perhaps a bit - but if the main point of the government program is something they view as not reflecting their priorities, but someone else's priorities, that "side benefit" isn't going to carry a lot of weight.

Plus "jobs that didn't exist before" is the optimistic way of framing it. The more pessimistic way of framing it is promoting jobs that "aren't my job," and possibly "jobs that aren't where I live." Dope1 mentioned the EV transition - which can be incredibly threatening to incumbent auto workers, especially those whose current positions are in firms or jobs that are related to the powertrain. Transitions (of any sort) involve uncertainty and risk in addition to opportunities.

Thanks for all the replies on the semi-fab jobs. It sounds like you don't necessarily need a degree to work in many of the positions. But given the fact that most people who work in the industry do have a degree, it may be that some of those positions end up being filled by candidates that have a degree anyway.

I won't question those numbers. I have only anecdotal evidence. Which is probably why you asked me. :-) We also assembled our chips (mostly), which was overseas (cheaper, dirty process, Asian countries have lax environmental standards), and employed a lot of non-college people because injection molding doesn't require a degree in physics or electrical engineering. Domestically, I'd say at least half of employees at my company were degreed. Probably more.

It is true that there is a lot of automation. Intel (and maybe TSMC? never been in one of their fabs) wants as little human intervention as possible. This somewhat is for cost, but probably the overriding consideration is that humans are filthy. If you have them wandering around, even in "bunny suits" or self-contained isolation suits, the risk of contamination increases significantly. And contamination is death in a clean room (especially a Class 1 clean room, which I believe all Intel's fabs are. Ours were mostly class 10, except for one Class 1 fab (which we didn't operate at that level...we bought it from another maker that was going under). I won't go into the weeds here, but there's also a difference between the room and the work surfaces. Immaterial for this discussion.

Automation is everywhere, and expanding. Dope mentioned that EV lines are heavily automated (Elon was very proud of that fact when I owned some TSLA), but conventional lines also are heavily automated, as well. If you want to run 24/7/365, machines don't get tired, don't need lunch breaks, and don't need to be switched out after 8 hours, and don't need paid vacation and healthcare. If you can hire one person to oversee 20 machines, that's better than hiring three shifts of 20 people each. If a job can be done by a machine, it inevitably will be done by a machine. So automated lines are not a good argument against a business, because all of them that can do it, are doing it.

Remember the company that was going to lay-off over 1000 workers and ship operations overseas (IIRC)? Pence gave them a grant of sorts. The company ended up automated their facilities, and laying off most of the workers anyway. I don't blame them; it was a smart business decision. I do blame the people that think this trend can (or should) be halted.

And that's also coming for degreed jobs. While I was at my company, we replaced most of the layout people with "auto place and route". A computer generated the layout of a design schematic for the most efficient use of space (on the chip). Previously, it was "hand-packed" (i.e. engineers did it by hand). As a side note, doing failure analysis on a APR chip was a nightmare because the routing wasn't based on modules, so everything was scattered everywhere, and it was difficult to identify individual functions just by looking. Made my job harder. Just as an example. Even degreed persons can be replaced by machines now.

Perhaps a bit - but if the main point of the government program is something they view as not reflecting their priorities, but someone else's priorities, that "side benefit" isn't going to carry a lot of weight.

Yes, I only learned about it in the past couple of years, so it wasn't being touted as a hob maker for blue collars. Roughnecking is a good way when it's around and running your own business. I wouldn't know how to bring back good jobs to any sector.

Austin Community College spans several central Texas counties and a lot of its focus is on training for industrial and trade jobs, often in partnership with major employers and targeting specific job skills. So while one not might not need a college degree to work in one of the many new plants entering the area, they do (I understand) give high preference for individuals who have proven an ability to learn as demonstrated by a certificate of completion form ACC.

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