I live near the Samsung site in Taylor, Texas. I’ve watched the cranes go up, the roads widen, and the conversations change at the coffee shop. So when I started benchmarking how other semiconductor regions are building their workforce ecosystems, it wasn’t academic for me. It was about my neighbors, and it was based on my personal experience working with workforce, education, and economic development colleagues in each region.
Over the past few weeks, as part of my FUSE Executive Fellowship with the City of Austin’s Economic Development Department, I took a deep look at the current state of the three regions on the same journey we’re on: Phoenix with #TSMC, Syracuse with #Micron, and Columbus with #Intel. Each one is trying to answer the same question we are: how do you make sure the people who already live here (especially families who’ve never had a map into these careers) actually land these jobs? Here’s what I found.
Phoenix built the bridge all the way to the job
Phoenix is furthest along. TSMC’s first fab entered volume production in late 2024, and the workforce system there matured fast. Maricopa Community Colleges runs a 10-day semiconductor boot camp that certified 587 people in its first year; more than half were first-generation college students, and two-thirds were students of color. Over 900 people have now been trained, with thousands more waiting for seats.
But the part that stuck with me is this: the City of Phoenix’s workforce board became the first in the country to sponsor a registered apprenticeship in the semiconductor industry. Apprentices are hired as full-time TSMC employees on day one. There’s also an 11-week evening program where TSMC pays the tuition and every graduate gets a guaranteed interview. Phoenix didn’t just build training. It built commitments. The training comes with a job attached, not just a hope.
Syracuse put wraparound supports in the deal itself
Micron just broke ground in Clay, New York, this past January. It’s years from production. But the region negotiated a $500 million community investment fund into the project from the start, and it doesn’t just fund training. It funds housing. A new bus route from Syracuse to the fab site. Childcare. Workforce services for refugee and immigrant communities. Micron has already put more than $15 million to work and reached over 4,000 K–12 students before a single chip gets made.
Syracuse understood something we talk about a lot in workforce development but rarely fund: the barriers that stop people aren’t usually academic. They’re a car that won’t start, a childcare bill, a bus that doesn’t run where the jobs are. This is where we need to move the needle most.
Columbus is the honest cautionary tale (kind of)
Ohio did something remarkable; all 23 of its community colleges adopted one shared semiconductor curriculum, co-designed with Intel engineers. About 150 people earned credentials in the first year, and enrollment jumped. Then Intel’s timeline slipped. Production is now expected in 2030 or 2031.
Here’s the good news buried in that story: because the credentials were built to transfer, graduates got hired by Honda, GE, and suppliers instead. The lesson isn’t “don’t build ahead of demand.” It’s “consider how building a pipeline for one company can benefit others if there’s a hiccup that impacts hiring.” Build it for a sector.
So where does Austin stand?
Honestly? Stronger than I expected, and stronger than most people here give us credit for.
We have almost 200 semiconductor-related companies in this region…not one anchor employer, but an entire ecosystem. That’s exactly the diversification that saved Columbus. Austin Community College’s advanced manufacturing enrollment has grown sixfold in five years, powered by dual-credit partnerships with ARMA and our school districts. (Exceptional work Dr. Laura Marmolejo, Ed.D and team!) TSTC is building a $47 million training campus in Hutto. UT, ACC, and the Texas Institute for Electronics are standing up a joint training center, and UT was just selected to lead the southern node of the national microelectronics education network. 104 partners across 10 states, coordinated from right here.
And on wraparound supports, the thing Syracuse had to negotiate into a corporate deal. Guess what? Austin already built it. The #AustinInfrastructureAcademy pairs career navigators with six months of fully covered childcare and was named the most innovative workforce program in the country by the #NationalAssociationofWorkforceBoards. E3 Alliance has already mapped the pathways, quantified the gap, and built the regional strategy.
The pieces are here. What the benchmark made crystal clear is that no city won by building more programs. They won by connecting the ones they had: one shared curriculum, one accountability structure, one front door for a family trying to find their way in.
That’s the work. Not building from scratch. Aligning. Collaborating. Making sure a student in Del Valle or a parent in Taylor doesn’t have to be lucky to find the pathway because the system found them first.
The City’s role
This work is exactly what the City of Austin’s Economic Development Department has tasked me with as a FUSE Executive Fellow. Not to duplicate what E3 Alliance, Austin Regional Manufacturers Association (ARMA), ACC, our workforce boards, and our school districts have already built. They’ve done extraordinary work! The City’s role is to be the connector and the accountability partner: convening employers around real commitments, wrapping supports around the people walking these pathways, and making sure the whole system outlasts any single project, program, or person.
E3 Alliance’s research tells us this region will see roughly 20,000 advanced manufacturing openings over the next five years. These are high-wage careers that don’t require a four-year degree. Whether they change lives in every ZIP code of this region depends on what we do together in the next 18 months.
I grew up in a family without a clear map into careers like these. That’s why this work matters to me. Austin doesn’t need to copy Phoenix, Syracuse, or Columbus. We need to learn from them, and then do what this city does best: build it our way, together.
Edgar Padilla is a FUSE Executive Fellow, focused on the advanced manufacturing and semiconductor industry and workforce, and embedded with the City of Austin Economic Development Department. He’s working to strengthen alignment across education, workforce, employer, and support systems around advanced manufacturing pathways. He is a former senior executive in technical higher education, publicly-elected school board trustee, Deloitte and EY alum, and Founder/Chief Strategist at Padilla Futures Group.
Originally published on LinkedIn.