Semiconductor manufacturer Micron will reduce its staff by 10 percent in 2023, according to a new report.
The company currently has 48,000 employees. “On December 21, 2022, we announced a restructure plan in response to challenging industry conditions,” the company wrote in an SEC filing. “Under the restructure plan, we expect to reduce our headcount by approximately 10 percent over calendar year 2023, through a combination of voluntary attrition and personnel reductions.” (Hat tip to CNBC for publishing excerpts from the filing.)
Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra also told listeners during a recent earnings call that the company had seen a “dramatic drop in demand” for chips.
Micron isn’t the only semiconductor manufacturer engaged in some belt-tightening. Earlier this year, a report from Bloomberg suggested Intel would cut thousands of jobs, although reported layoffs have numbered in the hundreds so far. Like Micron, Intel has faced slackening demand for its products, as well as rising competition from companies like Apple that have decided to manufacture their own chips in-house. (Nvidia and Qualcomm have also slowed or frozen hiring in recent months, with both likewise citing the current economic uncertainty.)
Despite these cuts, however, Micron and Intel still have ambitious plans to build new fabrication facilities throughout the United States. Micron plans on spending up to $100 billion on a factory complex in upstate New York, which could create 50,000 jobs (9,000 within Micron, and 40,000 for suppliers and local services). Meanwhile, Intel plans on building what its CEO termed the “largest silicon manufacturing location on the planet” in Columbus, Ohio; the campus will include two chip factories and could employ more than 3,000 once it comes online in 2025.
In addition to Intel and Micron, manufacturers such as Samsung and TSMC have pledged to invest significant funds into new chip-fabrication facilities throughout the country. Over the long term, those tech professionals with semiconductor expertise could find lots of opportunities for new jobs.
