The global “core” disease, which lasted for more than two years, has not been cured.
According to the latest data of AutoForecast Solutions (hereinafter referred to as “AFS”), the global auto market has reduced production of about 385000 cars this year due to chip shortage as of mid-February this year. Among them, the production reduction in China’s automobile market reached 25000 vehicles, accounting for about 6.5% of the total production reduction.
AFS data shows that since the chip shortage, the global auto market has reduced production by more than 15 million vehicles. In 2021 and 2022, the global auto market will reduce production by about 4.38 million and 10.56 million vehicles respectively. Although some insiders predict that the chip shortage will continue until the beginning of 2023, AFS expects that by the end of this year, the production reduction of global cars due to “lack of cores” may rise to about 2.75 million.
Not only downstream automobile enterprises, but also chip design and manufacturing enterprises located in the upstream of the industrial chain are also “nervous”. Not long ago, a recruitment message from TSMC aroused the attention of the outside world to the position of chip engineer.
Recently, TSMC announced that in order to meet the needs of business growth and technology development, it is expected to recruit more than 6000 new employees in 2023, of which the average overall annual salary of new engineers graduating from master’s degree will reach NT $2 million (about RMB 450000).
In this regard, some netizens directly called “the salary is really too high”, and some netizens envied “talent has a future”. Facing the high salary, some netizens said that he “wants to go if he studies well”.
In fact, with the popularity of the chip industry, the high salary of chip engineers is not uncommon, and has become one of the main characteristics of this profession. According to the “2023 Spring Recruitment Market Weekly Report (Issue 4)” released recently by Zhaopin Recruitment, chip engineers and AI engineers ranked the top two high-paying jobs in the four weeks after the Spring Festival, and the average recruitment salary continued to rise, reaching 28422 yuan/month and 25148 yuan/month respectively in the fourth week after the holiday, higher than the salary in the third week after the holiday. High-tech jobs have a good prospect.
Song Qinghui, a famous economist, said in an interview with the reporter of the Daily Economic News that the high salary of chip engineers is mainly supported by two factors. “On the one hand, its training cost is high and its training cycle is long; on the other hand, the market demand is large, leading to a relatively lack of chip engineers.” Song Qinghui told reporters.
1、 The annual salary of college graduates has reached 300000 yuan
According to public information, chip engineers have different titles in the chip industry chain. Among chip design engineers, there are system architecture engineers, front-end design engineers, functional verification engineers, back-end engineers, analog/RF design engineers, layout design engineers, etc; In chip manufacturing and packaging testing, there are equipment engineers, process engineers, process integration engineers, yield engineers, quality engineers, packaging engineers, etc.
Although they are all called chip engineers, the so-called million annual salary is not “rain and dew”. According to the reporter, high-paying jobs are mostly concentrated in the group of chip design engineers. According to the public data, by 2021, the annual salary of the new master’s degree graduates majoring in integrated circuits has been increased to 400000 yuan, and the salary of the scarce chip design engineers with more than five years of work experience has been raised to 1 million yuan. According to the survey, the average monthly salary of chip design engineers across the country is 31K, of which the number of people whose monthly salary is between 30K and 50K accounts for 54.9%.
“(In the past, it was assumed that it would cost 400000 yuan to recruit a talent, but now it might not be possible to recruit a talent without 1.2 million yuan. At that time, we thought it was normal for a talent with the level of 400000 yuan to be (doubled) three to five times in the whole industry.” The chairman of a Shenzhen microelectronics company once said publicly.
A digital chip design manager also said that an excellent DFT (design for testability) engineer with 5 to 10 years of experience in the industry could earn millions of yuan, but even so, it is even more difficult for enterprises to find a qualified DFT engineer.
“Now the starting salary of 211 or more undergraduate students who graduated from the semiconductor major is also 30w, and the chip industry is on the rise, so the salary of chip engineers is also very high. The salary increase is mainly for the positions related to chip design and manufacturing process.” A software engineer who is engaged in electronic product design told reporters.
The high salary also attracts many college graduates to choose chip designers as the starting point of their career. Lin Peng, who graduated last year, is currently working in an enterprise in Shanghai as a chip design engineer. As a graduate of 985 University, Lin Peng has worked as a chip engineer for seven months, with an annual salary of between 200000 and 300000 yuan.
“I am a professional counterpart. In fact, if I apply for a chip engineer, my major is relatively broad, such as mathematics, electronics, computer science, physics, etc. If I go to a chip factory, I want to have more experience in the project, and the decision is still in the enterprise. It depends on how many people they plan to recruit in the year, and also to seize the position early.” Lin Peng said, according to his observation, there are not many engineers in the industry with an annual salary of one million, The annual salary of recent graduates (mainly masters) in Shanghai is mostly between 150000 and 500000, depending on the specific situation.
“In the chip design industry, most people can’t touch the ceiling of this position at the age of 35. On the one hand, the reason is that the entry threshold is high. On the other hand, because chip design is a big project, it puts forward high requirements for chip design engineers, such as mastering programming, mastering circuit, mastering EDA tools, understanding computer architecture… This also determines the characteristics of high ceiling of chip design.” The above digital chip design managers believe that compared with the Internet industry, the “middle-aged crisis” of chip design will be smaller.
“At present, the whole chip industry is developing rapidly, which makes the competition for talents in the chip field extremely fierce, which also leads to the rising salary level of technicians in the chip field. It should be pointed out that the current shortage of chip talents is not only the shortage of talents in R&D and design, but also the overall shortage of talents in chip production technology, sales and marketing.” In Song Qinghui’s view, The reasons for the high salary of chip engineers mainly come from two aspects: first, the high cost and long period of talent training; The second is that there are many chip enterprises and the market demand is large, and excellent chip architects are particularly scarce.
According to the Talent Development Report of China’s Integrated Circuit Industry (2020-2021), in 2020, the number of graduates related to integrated circuits in China will be about 210000. It is estimated that by 2023, the talent demand of the whole industry will reach about 766500, of which the talent gap will reach 200000.
2、 The scale of the industry is expanding rapidly
Behind the high salary of chip engineers is the rapid expansion of the industry scale.
According to the statistics of the Integrated Circuit Design Branch of the China Semiconductor Industry Association, in 2022, the number of domestic chip design enterprises increased from 2810 in 2021 to 3243, an increase of 433, an increase of 15.4%; The sales of the whole industry is expected to be 534.57 billion yuan, up 16.5% year on year; The threshold for entering the top 10 IC design enterprises in 2022 has increased from 6.6 billion yuan in 2021 to 7 billion yuan. It is estimated that the sales scale of 566 enterprises will exceed 100 million yuan, 135 more than 413 in 2021.
Source: Statistical data of Integrated Circuit Design Branch of China Semiconductor Industry Association
Wei Shaojun, chairman of the Integrated Circuit Design Branch of the China Semiconductor Industry Association, believes that in 2022, China’s integrated circuit design industry still achieved a 16.5% growth despite the repeated epidemic situation. Although it has dropped from the previous two years, it still remains at a high level. The main reason is the strong support of China’s huge market. At the same time, the global “core shortage” has promoted downstream manufacturers to increase their procurement of integrated circuits, It also boosted the market and prices.
Not only that, as of December 26, 2022, 25 chip design enterprises have achieved IPO in 2022, and the total market value of these enterprises on December 1, 2022 is 472.115 billion yuan. In the 26 years since the first chip design company Yingfang Micro went public, 73 chip design companies have listed on the main board, SME board, GEM board and science and technology innovation board. As of December 1, 2022, the total market value of these companies was 1756.06 billion yuan.
However, according to the above statistics, although the chip design industry has maintained rapid growth on the whole, the development of leading enterprises is not ideal. In particular, the top ten IC design enterprises have not only lagged behind the industry’s average growth rate, but also experienced a regression in the development of some enterprises.
According to wind data statistics, as of January 31 this year, 100 companies in the semiconductor industry chain have released performance forecasts, of which 78 companies have made profits and 22 companies have made losses. Of the 78 companies that released pre-earnings, 46 companies maintained year-on-year growth in net profit, while 32 companies saw a decline in net profit. Among them, the performance of IC design semiconductor companies declined seriously, and nearly 20 companies had negative net profit.
Taking Sensitive Core (SH688286, with a share price of 58.28 yuan and a market value of 3.123 billion yuan), one of the oldest MEMS sensor suppliers in China, as an example, according to the performance forecast, its expected net profit attributable to the owners of the parent company in 2022 will be – 63.5 million yuan to – 48.5 million yuan, which will decrease by 60.924 million yuan to 75.924 million yuan compared with the same period of the previous year, with a year-on-year decrease of 49.37% to 611.11%.
In addition to Senson, the net profit of IC design companies such as Sunsea Technology, Praran Semiconductor and Gekewei also decreased by more than 50%.
In the view of Wei Shaojun, in 2022, the development of leading IC design enterprises will enter a bottleneck period and the growth will show signs of weakness. The reasons are as follows: firstly, the product technology level of the enterprise is not high enough and the competitiveness is not strong enough. The practice of winning by quantity is easily affected by the outside world; Second, the R&D investment is insufficient to keep up with the development of market demand; Third, in previous years, too much energy and resources have been invested in the exploration of “business model”, and insufficient investment has been made in product research and development, resulting in a lack of stamina; Fourth, the big enterprise disease that once troubled the industry also appeared in chip design enterprises, and the management level of enterprises needs to be improved; Fifthly, the development of some enterprises is ill-fated, constantly volatile, unable to maintain a long-term stable management and inconsistent policies, which is also an important reason for the slow development of enterprises.
However, Haitong Securities Research Report believes that the semiconductor industry will enter a downward cycle in 2022. After accelerating consumption and manufacturing capacity expansion in the past few quarters to a certain extent, the supply and demand of the industry will gradually balance, and some links will enter the de-stocking stage. The downward trend of the industry is gradually bottoming out, and the recovery of prosperity is expected. The industry prosperity is expected to increase gradually with the recovery of demand in the second half of 2023. At present, the inventory growth rate of some manufacturers has reached the top, and the performance continues to be under pressure. With the gradual stabilization of the global epidemic and the upward peak of economic pressure, the second half of this year may usher in a rebound opportunity for the consumer end. In this context, the investment opportunities of domestic high-quality IC design enterprises appear, and the annual valuation and repair space is expected. It is estimated that March to April 2023 will be an important time point to judge the investment opportunities of IC design.
3、 Structural deficiency of high-end chip talents
However, Sun Yong, who works in a chip foundry factory, is feeling that the “blindfolded” chip industry is receding.
“If you want to change jobs in the first two years, there are olive branches handed over by other enterprises everywhere, and the salary has doubled. But since the second half of 2022, the industry heat has begun to decline, and the salary increase will not be so exaggerated. However, there are also exceptions. The chip process is complex, and some irreplaceable chip design and other sectors, the salary increase situation is still optimistic.” Sun Yong said.
As Sun Yong said, “high-level talents are the most scarce resources”, which also applies to the chip industry. According to the 2023 IC Design Industry Post Compensation Report, the salary increase in the chip design industry will be 10% in 2022, leading the chip industry. The second is the semiconductor materials and equipment industry, with a year-on-year increase of 9.5% in 2022, second only to the chip design industry.
“I have been in the industry for more than ten years. At that time, many people engaged in the chip industry were college graduates, and many of them started from the production line. Later, people would consciously go to improve their academic qualifications in order to promote. But in recent years, our company basically recruited old workers or practitioners from double-top universities. The former has rich practical experience, while the latter has strong logic ability, which is relatively easy to cultivate.” Li Na, who is engaged in chip research and development, said that experienced practitioners and applied technology research and development talents are still “hot cakes” in this industry.
The semiconductor science and technology to which the chip belongs is an interdisciplinary field, involving a large number of basic knowledge, technical experience and technical know-how. Many industries believe that it is easy for junior talents to fill the gap, which can be met through university supply and training. The key is the lack of high-end talents who have basic knowledge, technical experience and technical know-how.
“In fact, despite the high popularity of the chip industry in the past two years, there is a very bad phenomenon. Some chip enterprises are doing repetitive work, and the products in the industry are somewhat homogeneous. For example, some people in the chip enterprises start businesses, and their products are very similar to the original company, and even the orders are split from the orders of the original company.” Li Na also confirmed the above view.
This is also closely related to the structural shortage of chips. “The problem of ‘lack of core’ has improved a lot this year. Our company also purchased from several chip companies, so the ‘lack of core’ is within the controllable range. However, some chips that rely on foreign suppliers may still be relatively tight.” A staff member of an independent brand automobile company told the reporter.
In fact, the structural shortage of talents in the chip industry has always existed. The White Paper on Talents in China’s Integrated Circuit Industry (2019-2020 Edition) once pointed out that China’s leading and high-end talents are in short supply, which has insufficient attraction for talents, insufficient support for talent training teachers and training conditions, the integration of industry and education needs to be strengthened, and the phenomenon of poaching among integrated circuit enterprises is widespread, resulting in frequent talent flow.
An article in the journal of the Chinese Academy of Sciences entitled “Pain Points” and Countermeasures for China’s Integrated Circuit Talent Cultivation under the Self reliance of High level Science and Technology “said that the survey shows that the structural imbalance of China’s integrated circuit talent system is mainly reflected in two aspects: the first is the lack of composite innovative talents with industry experience, and the second is the serious lack of industrial leaders with international vision.
4、 To comprehensively address the chip talent gap, enterprises turn to “cultivate internal skills”
“The shortage of chip talents has made it difficult for China’s chip development to achieve a major breakthrough, and it has been restricted by others for a long time. For the chip industry and enterprises to cope with the talent gap, the first is to continue to increase the training of chip talents, which is the fundamental solution to the plight of talent shortage in the chip field. The second is to increase the introduction of chip talents and speed up the filling of the shortage of chip talents.” Song Qinghui said.
At present, the focus of attracting talents in the chip industry has shifted from external expansion to cultivating internal skills
Post time: Mar-14-2023