Comment by georgefrowny

Micron Fab 6 is about 2300 staff (including 1000 contractors).

Even if you pay them all 500k per year, that's "only" about a billion a year in payroll.

The New York fab plan costs something like 20 billion more or less now to build, with 100 billion over 20 years.

Also, maybe the calculus is different right now in the US, but it used to be the semiconductor workers were expected to have PhDs coming out of their ears but were not actually paid very well, with salaries in Taiwanese fabs being around the $50-60k mark, and lower paid workers being more like $20k or less. Presumably US fabs will be automated to an even greater extent due to labour costs.

So it's very possible that servicing debt on the capital outlay is substantially more expensive than the payroll.