Intel is the latest company to get on the apprenticeship bandwagon as the CHIPS Act continues to put pressure on onshore semiconductor workforce development.

The company’s first U.S. registered apprenticeship program for manufacturing facility technicians will be piloted in Arizona, where it will train apprentices over the next five years. Apprentices chosen for the program will be full-time Intel employees from Day 1, earning a certificate and college credit upon the successful completion of the one-year program.

Intel’s first apprenticeship program is a collaboration with educational and workforce development organizations in Arizona that already have a great deal of experience collaborating with chip companies in the state, including the Arizona Commerce Authority, the Phoenix Business and Workforce Development Board, and Maricopa Community Colleges, as well as the SEMI Foundation.

Intel’s one-year registered apprenticeship program will include a mix of classroom instruction and on-the-job training encompassing the skills required for facility technician roles, including hand-tool basics, electrical basics and electronics, and handling of chemicals. The program will also emphasize necessary soft skills, such as communication skills, problem-solving and critical thinking.

In an interview with EE Times, Cindi Harper, vice president of talent planning and acquisition at Intel, said apprenticeships are a new concept for the company but a necessary workforce development tool as the CHIPS Act shifts supply chain capabilities back to the U.S. “We aren’t going to have enough talent through the traditional recruitment methods,” she said, adding that this includes drawing people away from competitors. “We’re all working together as a workforce and as an industry.”

Apprenticeships offer an untraditional pathway to help Intel grow the talent needed for new fabs, Harper said. There’s already a massive shortage of facility technicians, she said, and apprenticeships lend themselves well to training for hands-on roles that traditionally aren’t well-fed by science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) degrees.

Harper said Intel is hoping to generate interest at the high school level and even earlier, as well as with people who are looking to transfer their existing skills over to the semiconductor industry. She said it’s “all hands on deck” with local Arizona partners to create a new apprenticeship program that targets underrepresented, under-resourced communities and gets women and underrepresented minorities thinking about a career they may not have or heard of.

Intel is expected to learn a lot from its first apprenticeship program in Arizona, where it already has 40 years of workforce development under its belt, Harper said. “We have great connections with Maricopa.” Once the program is scaled and adjusted in Arizona, Intel can look to bring something similar to other locations, such as Oregon, Ohio and New Mexico, she said, which already have other workforce development initiatives. “We’re doing different types of things at different locations.”

In Ohio, Intel is working with the Ohio Association of Community Colleges’ Semiconductor Collaboration network to launch programs and career pathways that aim to meet the demands of the industry, while its AI for Workforce Program provides more than 600 hours of free AI content, professional training for faculty and implementation guidance for community colleges.

Harper said having an “earn and learn” approach is critical to recruiting applicants for apprenticeships and internships, especially for underprivileged communities that want to break into a growing industry. In addition to getting paid during their training, they need wraparound services like childcare and help with tuition, she said. “They can actually focus on developing their career and making that work.”

Intel’s first apprenticeship program in Arizona puts it in the same category as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), which sees apprenticeships as critical to supporting its workforce needs as it looks to staff two big fabs in that state. NXP Semiconductors, meanwhile, began developing programs in mid-2022, including a semiconductor equipment technician apprenticeship.

Texas is also looking to ramp up apprenticeships to meet chip sector workforce demands as the state recognizes the need for additional pathways for career development. Austin Community College District has been collaborating with workforce development organizations and semiconductor companies to create entry pathways at various points and equip students with the right skills, especially in manufacturing.

Despite all the recent focus on using apprenticeship programs to grow the semiconductor industry’s workforce, it’s not a model that has been widely embraced until recently, Michelle Williams-Vaden, deputy and senior director of strategy partnerships at SEMI, told EE Times in an interview. “We started talking with industry about it a couple of years ago and there was so much confusion,” she said. “People had very specific perceptions of what a registered apprenticeship was and didn’t think it necessarily fit.”

Williams-Vaden said SEMI has spent the past few years talking with industry leads about the apprenticeship model and its ability to expand the workforce. “It’s such an extraordinary model to home-grow your own workforce and to bring people who are historically underrepresented in the industry into the industry.”

She said apprenticeships are not just good for the industry; they are good for workers. “It gives workers mobility. It gives them the ability to expand their opportunities.”

As more companies like Intel adopt apprenticeships and understand the model, word of mouth is spreading knowledge about the benefits, Williams-Vaden said, which can help smaller organizations, not just the big players. “The great thing about registered apprenticeships is that there can be a single-employer program, but then there’s also multi-employer programs.”

With the introduction of the CHIPS Act, Williams-Vaden said SEMI has gone from pushing a boulder up a hill to chasing it down the other side as the chip industry has grown to understand the power of the apprenticeship model and its ability to address the workforce shortage.

Williams-Vaden said poaching talent is problematic because it just moves the same players around. “The registered apprenticeship model is a massive opportunity to dramatically grow the pie.”

 ----Form EE Times