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Apple Spent $60B on 9,000 American Suppliers in 2018, Supporting 450,000 Jobs (macrumors.com)

Posted by msmash on from the closer-look dept.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Well timed with a report from The New York Times today that explained why Apple is unlikely to manufacture more of its products in the United States, Apple has published a press release highlighting how several components it uses are manufactured by U.S. suppliers such as Finisar, Corning, and Broadcom. Apple says it spent $60 billion with 9,000 American component suppliers and companies in 2018, an increase of more than 10 percent from the year before. Apple says this spending supports more than 450,000 jobs in the United States.

11 of 54 comments (clear)

  1. They'd probably like to spend more by olsmeister · · Score: 2

    But they can't.

  2. Re:Blatant advertisment by nadass · · Score: 2

    No, it's Bolstering The Stock Market Day

  3. Apple PR Success by Luthair · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Notice how we suddenly have multiple articles at the same time about how Apple is great for the economy and how they couldn't possibly manufacture here. The source of these articles couldn't possibly be a PR campaign from Apple about how they're an important US company who contributes domestically despite how hard it is.

  4. 60 billion / 450,000 by greythax · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Did I do the math right, that's like $133,000 a job? Wonder what percentage of that makes it to the workers?

    1. Re:60 billion / 450,000 by TFlan91 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Ha! That's 60$ billion TOTAL COST, not just labor.

      I'd say 2 - 3/5ths of that is going towards labor.

      So anywhere between $50 - $80k

    2. Re:60 billion / 450,000 by vux984 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Who knows what their methodology was? Did they disclose it? They could have just summed up the employment figures of all the suppliers they do business with for all I know.

      And then maybe added in the knock on employment as well.

      For example, a mill or a mine can effectively 'create' a whole town. The mine just pays the mine workers, the mine workers in turn use their salaries for everything from kitchen renovation contractors to haircuts from mcdonalds burgers to daycare for their kids... and the mine takes "credit" for the entire job market of the town. And its not even 'wrong'... because we've all seen a mine close and the town die.

      Suppose also that an ore refinery in the next town over has a contract to buy all the ore from that mine for $1 billion a year. It *can* claim that $1 billion is creating all the jobs in the town. And its not "wrong" because its supporting the mine... But you obviously can't just take a dollar amount and divide it by people to figure out an average salary in a calculation like this. A big chunk of that money was paying for the output of the mine itself... the actual ore to refine. And this is of course a super simplistic example.

      But the point is there are economic 'models' one can use, and methodologies one can use for estimating how many 'jobs' you create with an investment of size X in an industry Y.

      And all kinds of ways of stretching and abusing and oversimplifying those estimates if you just want a good PR puff piece and only care about 'somewhat plausible' vs 'accurate'.

    3. Re:60 billion / 450,000 by viperidaenz · · Score: 4, Insightful

      When you buy an iPhone, most of the money goes to Apple's cash account, sitting off shore waiting for the next tax avoidance scheme to be implemented.
      They're up to nearly $300 billion in cash reserves.

    4. Re:60 billion / 450,000 by CanadianMacFan · · Score: 2

      As was pointed out below the 450, 000 jobs most likely included those knock on jobs. But just because Apple spent money with the companies in the US doesn't mean all of that money stayed within the US. Just like when you buy an iPhone, iPad, or Mac in the US, not all of your money stays within the US. Some of that goes to those suppliers in the US. There are also supplies in Asia that are paid. Most of the actual components are fabricated in Asia so money ends up there for that. I would bet that many of those 60 American suppliers have overseas production facilities.

      Then those companies have all of the other costs of doing business such as utilities, taxes (federal, state, local, sales, payroll), facility costs, shipping, cost of manufacturing if it isn't software, legal, sales, etc. Plus they want to be making a profit to keep the shareholders happy.

      The money Apples sends to suppliers can't just be divided by the number of estimated jobs to come up with a salary for them. Besides, those companies (hopefully) have other customers too.

  5. Globalism as it should be by Sarten-X · · Score: 3, Insightful

    In other words, despite what propagandists love to spout, the economy is global, and buying from anywhere creates jobs everywhere. It's stupidly short-sighted to focus on one particular industry in one particular location, because global shipping is so cheap that it's more cost-effective to move parts around than to stand up a local manufacturing process.

    Buy parts from country A, built components in B and C, assemble in D, sell to E. Everybody benefits a little bit, and the end result is a product that's cheap enough to be reasonably affordable.

    --
    You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
  6. that's heaps... by viperidaenz · · Score: 3, Interesting

    All $60 billion went the those companies Chinese subsidiaries.

    They're saying it like they're unique in the industry.

    Most midrange or better smart phones have Corning glass. They'll probably also have Broadcom, Qualcomm or Intel chips in them.
    It's probably only Samsung that isn't full of American designed chips (of which only Intel are probably made in USA, the rest at TSMC) but they'll still have Corning glass.

  7. 9,000 Suppliers. by Fly+Swatter · · Score: 2

    I would love to see that list. Probably includes pizza delivery, magazine subscriptions, lawn care, grocery store toilet paper runs... How many actually went into manufacturing their product? We know it wasn't screws.