by TYLER O’LEARY 

Have you ever wondered why it’s still so hard to obtain a Ps5 or why new and used cars are becoming more expensive and are harder to build? Microchip shortage is preventing many products around the world from being manufactured and it doesn’t seem like it’s getting better anytime soon. One leading factor on why this problem is happening is supply and demand from consumers and how COVID-19 affected the economy. Many companies and manufacturers believed that no one would be ordering new cars, consoles, cameras, televisions, etc.  They were wrong. During the pandemic, the complete opposite occurred and a deluge of buyers demanded products from all around the world. This put the technological industry in a funk that would be hard to recover from. Millions of companies are missing the components to produce these items making it difficult to fulfill sales. The microchip shortage was expected to be gone late into 2021 but now it looks like that date will be prolonged into 2023 experts fear.

Don’t give up hope yet many companies are trying to help overcome the problem. TSMC (Taiwan’s Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) will be investing $100 billion to increase the production of the chips. They will also be adding multiple foundries which manufacture the chips along with Samsung to increase production and get back on track. But there are also some more good things happening from the chip shortage. Trade-in vehicles are worth more and many more job opportunities are opening up for car dealerships. With sales returning to the pre-pandemic level this will hopefully increase the production of cars as the chip shortage slowly fades away. The same goes for consoles and electronics.  

As the Microchip shortage dissipates we should see more availability of cars, electronics, consoles, appliances and other important items. Prices should begin to drop and things will go back to normal one step at a time.