Skills as Security: Semiconductor Reshoring & The Promise of “Good Jobs” in Chipmaking
Julia Marino, Mershon Center Postdoc, and Madhumita Dutta, Associate Professor of Geography, will lead a discussion of their research on semiconductor reshoring and the promise of good jobs.
In the national news, the CHIPS & Science Act was a geopolitically urgent pivot: a response to fragile supply chains, great power competition, and the strategic vulnerability revealed by pandemic-era shortages. But here in Ohio, we have seen a different set of assurances: in New Albany, a planned megafab promised to turn cornfields into a “Silicon Heartland.”
To build political momentum for this massive investment in a private company, government leaders have seized on the promise of “good jobs.” The narrative suggests that as long as workers acquire the right skills, shared prosperity from government subsidies is guaranteed. Intel, the corporate beneficiary, has reinforced this story by committing $17.7 million to establish semiconductor-specific training programs at 84 Ohio institutions. “There will be plenty of jobs for the whole region,” a company spokesperson assured, rationalizing the vast geographic scope of training opportunities for a single site in Central Ohio.
Marino's and Dutta's research traces how the promise of good jobs, delivered through government-sponsored workforce “pipelines,” makes large subsidy deals legible—and lovable—to the public. Meanwhile, the public absorbs much of the risk and the gains seem to concentrate among those already wealthy. Training is indeed a deceptively humane and broadly popular policy instrument: it recasts industrial strategy as a civic promise.
Yet for all the talk of widely shared prosperity, the risks of these subsidy deals are pushed downward. Public institutions reorganize curricula, hire staff on grant cycles, and build costly training infrastructure in a rush to “get ready” for Intel. Students are urged to wager time and tuition on an over-promised, under-delivered high-tech future, while local governments absorb heavy costs, too. It is a wearying cycle repeated since the 1980s.
Amidst the moral certainty that “skills equal good jobs,” fundamental questions of democracy and security have been overlooked: what obligations must follow public subsidy? What counts as “success” when job quality and safety remain optional in an industry with a history of hazards and anti-unionism? And, ultimately, what makes a good job?