IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/34625.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Employment Impacts of the CHIPS Act

Author

Listed:
  • Bilge Erten
  • Joseph E. Stiglitz
  • Eric Verhoogen

Abstract

The CHIPS and Science Act, enacted in August 2022, is a key element of the revival of U.S. industrial policy. We examine the short-term employment effects of the act. Drawing on quarterly industry-by-county data from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW), we implement two county-level difference-in-difference designs, the first comparing counties with pre-existing semiconductor facilities to other counties with high-tech industries and the second comparing counties with semiconductor fabrication facilities (which were targeted for the bulk of the CHIPS funding) to counties with non-fabrication semiconductor facilities. Using both approaches, we find robust, positive employment impacts in affected counties. The effects began at the time of the passage in the Senate of a precursor bill, in anticipation of the signing of the CHIPS Act. Our preferred estimates suggest an increase of 110 jobs per affected county in the first design and 180 jobs per affected county in the second design. We also find robust positive impacts on local construction employment. Evidence on total employment and GDP at the county level, as well as on employment in upstream input sectors, is mixed. Simple back-of-the-envelope calculations (which come with caveats) suggest national direct employment effects of approximately 15,000-16,000 jobs in the core semiconductor sector and indirect effects of 28,000-35,000 jobs in related sectors.

Suggested Citation

  • Bilge Erten & Joseph E. Stiglitz & Eric Verhoogen, 2026. "Employment Impacts of the CHIPS Act," NBER Working Papers 34625, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34625
    Note: LS PR
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w34625.pdf
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • J01 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - General - - - Labor Economics: General
    • L52 - Industrial Organization - - Regulation and Industrial Policy - - - Industrial Policy; Sectoral Planning Methods
    • L63 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Manufacturing - - - Microelectronics; Computers; Communications Equipment

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34625. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.