South Korea's Chip Factories Are Racing to Fill Factory Floors
Source: NYT > Business (paywall)
Memory chip demand from AI applications has made semiconductor manufacturing lucrative enough to recruit high school graduates directly into production lines, shifting the traditional college-to-tech-job pipeline. South Korea's aging workforce and low birth rate mean chip makers can't wait for the education system to retrain adults, forcing them to compete for teenagers instead. The risk is real: sustained chip production depends on keeping young workers committed to repetitive, dangerous factory jobs when the wages and conditions that made it attractive could evaporate once AI-driven demand normalizes.