Intel Is Laying Off Workers After Billions of Dollars in Federal Subsidies
Intel Corp. successfully pushed for congressional approval of a $76 billion subsidy for the chip industry. Now, it is laying off workers in an austerity regime while continuing to give shareholders massive payouts.
President Joe Biden and Pat Gelsinger, chief executive officer of Intel Corp., arrive for a ceremony at the groundbreaking of the new Intel semiconductor manufacturing facility near New Albany, Ohio, on September 9, 2022. (Gaelen Morse / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Just a couple of months after Intel’s multimillion dollar lobbying effort succeeded in winning microchip companies billions of dollars in no-strings-attached corporate subsidies, Intel is reportedly planning to lay off thousands of workers.
The potential layoffs come only weeks after the company announced a shareholder dividend at the same rate as the previous few quarters — amounting to a total of about $6 billion in annual dividends.
The sequence of events confirms warnings about the so-called CHIPS Act from a vanishingly small number of critics who cautioned that without changes, the legislation would let companies use the money to finance payouts to wealthy investors, and would not obligate the companies to expand their investments in domestic jobs.
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