My first job, at age 16, during the summer between high school and college, was with an electronics shop. Before the age of microchips, we made parts for a little known business at the time, Texas Instruments.
I worked 54 hours a week - 40 hours for minimum wage, $1.00 per hour; 14 hours, at time and half, $1.50. I made far more money than any of my friends working other summer jobs.
Each summer for four summers, I made one element over and over again, ten hours a day. I appreciated having employment and the money I made. It helped with college expenses. The women, and only five women worked full time in the shop, were generous in teaching me and helping me master my duties. I wore jeans to work and carried my lunch. Our products were definitely “Made in America,” a phrase that I have come to appreciate more each year.
However, the repetitiveness reinforced my desire to complete my college education and find more inspiring work for me. Teaching and working for the newspaper have certainly challenged my mind and talents in ways that assembly-line production did not.
Hindsight now tells me that my earliest job was important to the fledgling tech industry, an entity which was hit hard by the pandemic. The most obvious fallout is the worldwide shortage of microchips, which began with the shutdown of factories due to COVID-19. Today’s demand is now far greater than it was before the great interruption.
Buyers, anxious for new vehicles, new computers and smart phones and any other electronic equipment, wait, often impatiently, while microchip supply tries to catch up with demand. After all, we’ve come to expect our wants to be met immediately - fast food, instant coffee, 24/7 news, and a glut of social media.
Those of my generation grew up waiting until we had saved enough money to purchase our heart’s desire. By that time, the item we thought we had to have often had lost its shimmer. But even with those appliances that we now consider necessities, we waited until we could afford to buy them. More importantly, they lasted forever and could be repaired if a part wore out. These days as electronically equipped appliances wear out, one after another, I long for those well-made-in-America appliances that ran like an Energizer Bunny for years and years and years. Also, these days, at my age, waiting takes on a different face. Will I still be around whenever my order arrives?
According to Katie Canales, writing for Business Insider, U.S. inventors and designers still create the most up-to-date prototypes, but 75 percent of the world’s chip manufacturing comes from Asia because these governments offer more attractive financial incentives like tax breaks and grants and less restrictions to construct the factories out of the country. It might have been good for management’s bottom line at the time, but today, we find it harmful to the nation to depend on parts made on foreign soil.
Those statistics, added to today’s shortage, represent a national security risk according to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo. She told a Senate committee this year, “It is not an exaggeration to say, at the moment, that we have a crisis in our supply chain. Not that long ago, America led the world in making leading-edge semiconductor chips. Today we produce 0% of those chips in America, 0%. That’s a national security risk and an economic security risk. The Department of Defense has been warning us for years, that the decline in our small- and medium-size manufacturers in critical supply chains is a national security risk.”
When the1970s gasoline shortage was viewed as a national security risk, officials vowed to increase local production to prevent dependence on foreign oil. It seems as if we need to make the same pledge concerning electronic parts.
If I were younger, more technologically savvy and itching to be an entrepreneur, I’d look into starting a factory to manufacture microchips. I know all the experts say that such an enterprise is complicated at best. But it’s time for today’s innovators to bring production of necessary items back to the United States. Until then, we wait.
Happy Labor Day.
2021
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