A sweeping 2022 law, touted by President Joe Biden as a way to revive U.S. manufacturing of semiconductors and reduce the country’s reliance on foreign-made computer chips, will “sharply increase production’’ of semiconductors in the United States. But it will do so at a high cost and might not deliver the best bang for the buck, concludes a report out Wednesday by an economic think tank in Washington.
Researchers at the Peterson Institute for International Economics calculated that the $280 billion CHIPS and Science Act will create about 93,000 construction jobs as chip factories go up in the United States and 43,000 permanent jobs once they’re in operation. But the government subsidies behind the expected chip manufacturing boom mean that each job created will cost taxpayers about $185,000 a year – twice the average annual salary of U.S. semiconductor employees, the Peterson report found.
