TAIPEI (TVBS News) — The battle for semiconductor talent is being fought with paychecks — and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC, 台積電) just raised its bid. The world's largest chipmaker confirmed Wednesday (April 22) that top performers will receive salary increases up to 9 percent this year, as Chinese rivals dangle salaries multiple times higher or pay huge bonuses like in South Korea.
TSMC said average raises will range from 3 to 5 percent in 2026, with individual adjustments based on performance reviews, seniority and job grade. The company distributed a record NT$206.1 billion (US$6.5 billion) in employee bonuses and profit-sharing for 2025 — averaging more than NT$2.64 million (US$83,800) per worker, according to Taiwan's Market Observation Post System (公開資訊觀測站).
The escalation reflects a structural crisis. McKinsey projects that Asia-Pacific will face an engineer shortfall exceeding 200,000 by 2030, as global semiconductor investment approaches US$1 trillion between 2023 and 2030. Taiwan and South Korea, with birth rates among the world's lowest, are watching their labor forces shrink by an estimated 1 percent annually over the next decade, according to Capital Economics.
TSMC's response has been to expand — but expansion requires more workers. The company has deployed thousands of employees to its Arizona facilities and plans to open an advanced chip packaging plant there by 2029, Senior Vice President Kevin Zhang (張曉強) told Reuters on Tuesday. Construction has already begun at the site, executives said Wednesday at a conference in Santa Clara, California.
Back in Taiwan, the cost of retention keeps climbing. The chipmaker's average employee salary reached NT$4.09 million (US$129,800) in 2025 — a 22.95 percent increase from the previous year. TSMC's workforce surpassed 80,000 at the end of 2024 and is estimated to have exceeded 90,000 by late 2025; the company expects to hire 8,000 more in Taiwan this year.
Yet even record compensation may not be enough. About 67,000 jobs needed to sustain U.S. semiconductor industry growth would go unfilled by 2030, according to Oxford Economics and the Semiconductor Industry Association. More than half of U.S. semiconductor workers were expected to leave the industry in 2024, compared with 40 percent in 2021, according to McKinsey, and a third of the workforce is already 55 or older.
"Companies are ready to expand, the funding is there, and the demand for chips has never been higher," said Shari Liss, vice president of global workforce development and initiatives at SEMI. "But without enough skilled workers, timelines keep slipping, costs definitely rise and the companies face real challenges in meeting their goals."
The question facing TSMC and its rivals is no longer who pays more — it's whether there will be enough engineers to hire at any price. The battle for talent may ultimately be won not by the highest bidder, but by whoever can build a workforce that doesn't yet exist. ◼ (At time of reporting, US$1 equals approximately NT$31.51)