maybe I misinderstand your meaning but at its heart the real problem is that chip engineers salary has been stuck at ten years ago for about twenty years. Like 50k usd.

This in and of itself is not a huge problem but with no downstream opportunities there isn't enough talent considering a career toward the top of the value chain.

The 1980s and 1990s saw alot of people come back to Taiwan, but the 2010s and 2020s sees it happen in another direction (mainland, the salary is awesome).

Of course many will say factory workers don't need to smart enough to do design. but IC production is complicated and needs skilled labor with some understanding of what they're doing.