Apple: We're responsible for 514,000 American jobs | Hacker News Reader

Apple: We're responsible for 514,000 American jobs

thetechblock.com

14 pointsTechBlock137 comments

This is pathetic. Apple attempts to justify huge markups on cheap foreign labour by boasting about how many jobs it has created at home. Pure bullshit. It has tocreate those jobs to sustain its business. It does not have to use foreign labour, but it does because it's cheaper. If they could outource their entire operation and see X times profi, you can be absolutely sure they would. In a heartbeat.

It's not just that the labour is cheap. The manufacturing in China is far more integrated and nimble than it is in America. China is winning on more than just price.

See this article: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/business/apple-america-and...

Also, Apple isn't justifying its huge margins. Everyone who buys an Apple product is.

Apple is TRYING to justify it. If they didn't care about the negative publicity they would not have put that site up. I'm not disputing the fact that it's cheaper to do this stuff overseas, just that Apple is not being honest and just saying that, instead they're trying to steer (SPIN) the conversation so they look good instead of greedy.

and when FOXconn switches to robotic factories in the next 3 years than what will be your complaint? What that Japan is making money selling and out-fitting those factories?

This is not on Apple..America lost the Automation race to Japan by being very strategically stupid

Apple is not to blame for that mistake

It's not about blame, it's about being honest about why you're doing something. Apple is not being honest, they never have. Secrecy and spin rule the world at Apple. I don't care if you hire child robots to work in your factories, just don't try and blow sunshine up my ass about why you're doing it. They're a big greedy corporation that likes money. That's the story.

They're a big greedy corporation that likes money. That's the story.

They're a big, successful corporation that likes to create great products and great customer experiences. Greed gets you Goldman Sachs or something. Greed doesn't inspire companies to improve customer service by keeping their support hotlines based in the US, it inspires them to outsource their hotlines to poor, nominally "English-speaking" countries overseas. The greedy PC and phone manufacturers didn't build expensive, high-end retail stores, they just shipped all their crap to big box stores, Amazon, and the carrier stores.

It turns out that Apple is profitable, because people like all those things Apple splurged on. So call it enlightened self-interest, but greed, in the sense of cutting corners to reduce costs, it is not. The next time you call Dell's customer service and end up talking to someone called "Mike" who has a suspiciously thick South Asian accent, or the next time you try to call Google's customer service before realizing it doesn't exist, you'll understand what mere greed leads people to do.

You sound angry.

I don't understand why people get mad at Apple. Get mad at American consumers for demanding, no worse, feeling entitled to paying extremely low prices for very high tech things. Apple could use American manufacturing and either produce crap at low profits, or extremely expensive gadgets no one could afford. Instead, they produce millions of devices people want and buy, then have to explain themselves for not employed good old fashioned American labor in their factories.

They're creating high tech, high-skilled jobs (product design, software development, hardware diagnosis and repair) at home, and outsourcing the low-tech low-skilled jobs to foreigners.

I'm happy they're doing well. They have made smart business decisions and some great products. I just wish they'd stop trying to spin everything. They made the decision to ship jobs overseas and that was good for their bottom line, but instead of talking about that, they talk about how many US jobs they've created. It's not an honest conversation.

It's not that people feel entitled to paying extremely low prices. People will just go with the cheapest option. I don't go with cheaper options because I feel entitled. I go with cheaper options because I want to save money.

They once did create expensive gadgets no one could afford. Macs used to cost a lot more than PCs. Then Apple moved labor overseas, started pricing their products competitively, and now they have the highest market cap.

Quick math on the iOS app economy:

> The app revolution has added more than 210,000 iOS jobs to the U.S. economy since the introduction of iPhone in 2007

> Apple has paid more than $4 billion in royalties to developers through the App Store

The app store has been around since summer '08, so let's say it's been around for 3.5 years.

$4B / 210,000 / 3.5 = $5442.17 per annum

Converted to an hourly wage, that's $2.62/hr (or $454 monthly). Way below minimum wage. Either Apple has some funky math going on here, or they've created 210k very crappy jobs.

Note: I'm ignoring Advertising and B2B revenue here, so when you factor that in I'm sure the gross product jumps quite a bit. Still, Apple ignores that part of the market as well, so either they should publish a gross product for the iOS economy, or they're leading me to the conclusion above.

Some notes, on why I think your calculation while interesting, is way off:

1. You shouldn't consider summer 2008 as epoch.

2. Not all of those $4B were paid to US developers (I'd guess less than 60% of that)

3. A huge number of apps (thousands) on the App Store are free (from Google, Facebook, Amazon, Zynga, ...) - For all we know, all such free apps have been created by a team of 10-15 iOS developers/testers/etc.

I'm also skeptical about the claim, but I think that your calculation wasn't a good one.

Well. in actuality the $4B is paid according to Pareto distribution ( Pareto principle). That means a small chunk of developers with highly successful apps are going to get a large chunk of that $4B. This makes Apple's claim actually worse.

Their number of registered developers and jobs from iOS is probably also skewed by failing to remove inactive developers.

You're also failing to account for revenue created through the ad platforms on the free apps. I imagine that'd be a sizeable chunk that's not included in the 4B figure.

I wish Apple would turn its gift for innovation toward manufacturing so they can bring those jobs back home to America, or at least some percentage of them. That would be a very noble effort on their part.

Steve Jobs told Obama point blank that those jobs are never coming back. We're better off looking for alternatives.

They will only come back if you can convince an American to be ‘integrated and nimble’, translation, to live in a dorm attached to the factory so he can be woken in the middle of the night, given a biscuit and a cup of tea, and put on a unplanned twelve-hour shift.

We needn’t debate whether this is right or wrong, good or bad, it is enough to recognize that the likelihood of negotiating such arrangements with Americans is remote.

Oh, so now he's an economist as well? Interesting.

Mr. Jobs was not an economist and never claimed to be. He was the CEO of a company in the centre of the issue being discussed, and he gave his anecdotal opinion as someone with a clearly expert knowledge of the situation.

The Internet is a bitch. If an economist stands up and says “This is the case with tech jobs,” he’ll be shouted down as an academic with no real-world experience in the tech sector. If an expert in the tech sector stands up and says “This is the case with tech jobs,” he will be shouted down for lacking the academic credentials to offer an opinion.

Tough room.

They know the jobs aren't coming here. We know it. So why do they try and distract us with this fluffy propaganda? Apple thinks we're all stupid. As long as their share price keeps climbing they'll keep doing shit like this, and PROVE that we're all stupid.

Isn't 1/2 million jobs better than one at all? You sound like you want Apple to disappear from the face of the earth.

No, they're big and successful and I buy their products. I just want them to be honest.

But he also noted supreme disappointment in the situation, as he'd built such a factory in Fremont (?) to build NeXT machines twenty years earlier. I think the issue is that all the suppliers are in the same area, which is in China, and that synergy was created by China to make the current manufacturing base only viable in China. Wise on their part. Maybe the US politicians had less foresight?

I think Apple would be a force to be reckoned with in union-busting. As I understand, everything is done to prevent Apple Store employees from unionizing already.

And hey, I understand the need for a break-neck pace for a company that constantly disrupts its own market and has to turn around the ship in the blink of an eye in order to stay on top of the business. I don't know if it's possible to bring back the manufacturing jobs to the States without breaking basic labour condition rights.

> As I understand, everything is done to prevent Apple Store employees from unionizing already.

It amuses me how modern-day union-busters like Apple and Whole Foods do everything to prevent their employees from unionizing by...providing good pay and benefits. Funny that.

Those jobs are going to the robots sooner than anyone can bring them back to the US.

And Apple will come out with a spin story about how many American robots were created to build the Chinese robots. Wait for it...

It'd be neat if the jobs could go to Californian robots, rather than Chinese ones. Remember when Jobs built a fully automated robotic assembly line in Fremont for the Next computer.

Why exactly would bringing them back to America be noble? Apple has its roots in the USA but it is very much an international company. The USA are no more deserving of those jobs than any other place on the planet.

Apple should speed up improving the situation of their workers in China. That would be great. Bringing them “back home” would seem just strange to me. Definitely not noble, nationalism never is.

Your view seems very selfish to me and it seems strange that selfish and humanitarian seem to mix so well in those debates. It’s not better for Chinese workers if Apple were to pull out of China. The best solution for them is if Apple improves their working conditions.

Trying to bring back manufacturing to US seems a short sighted move. As 3D printing improves, is there really a future for manufacturing? Future Generations are not going to buy manufactured products from China, they are gonna print at local mall.

Apple: 514 000 jobs

Healthcare: 14 336 000 jobs [1]

Healthcare embarrasses Apple.

[1] http://www.bls.gov/oco/cg/cgs035.htm

Umm. Healthcare is an industry that touches 100% of citizens' lives.

Apple is a corporation that sells a few percent of the computers and phones bought each year.

What is embarrassing about that?

Apple says, "As a result, we’ve created or supported more than 500,000 jobs for U.S. workers: from the engineer who helped invent the iPad to the delivery person who brings it to your door" [1]

It tries to include every person, just to make the number of jobs higher (it even includes healthcare workers).

Healthcare includes only jobs strictly associated with it - and that's embarrassing for Apple which had to include other industries.

"47,000 jobs at Apple" [1] - that's the real number of Apple jobs, and it's comparable with Intel (45375 jobs, 55% of their worldwide employment) [2]

[1] http://www.apple.com/about/job-creation/

[2] http://bit.ly/AdgusU [PDF] Intel "2010 Annual Report and Form 10-K"

Apple fanboys calm down! I'm not mad about how well Apple is doing, they'e earned their success. They've made some great products and they've made some great business decisions, like using offshore manufacturing.

My complaint with Apple is with choice to start a dishonest conversation about jobs in the US instead of talking about why they use foreign manfacturing. They don't want to talk about their "China problem" because it's unpopulart so they spin a story about how many US jobs they have created to distract you.

If they were proud of their offshore manufacturing, why don't they have a page about that? Don't hold your breath waiting ro that one.

Why would they put that page up? What's in it for them? It distracts you from the problem and makes you like them for creating jobs they had to create anyay.

> They don't want to talk about their "China problem"

What else do you want Apple to say?

It is common knowledge that they outsource manufacturing overseas, and it's common knowledge that they do it simply to maximize profits, however, it's not something to be publicly proud or ashamed of, it's just business.

Making lots of jobs in America, OTOH, is very positive.

They don't just want to avoid talking about it, they are actively working to spin it. If they had said nothing about jobs in the US, which came completely out of nowhere, I would have a lot more respect for them. They are acting ashamed by trying to distract everyone. Yes, be proud that you created jobs, but be honest about why you're suddenly trying to draw attention to that fact.

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