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Apple Earns $400,000 Per Employee, Still Won't Make iPhones In The U.S.A

It wasn't so long ago, that Apple boasted that its products were made in America. As of today very few are, most of the 70 million iPhones, 30 million iPads, and 59 million other Apple products sold last year are made overseas. In a dinner with Silicon Valley's elite, Barack Obama asked Steven P Jobs "Why can't that work come home? The response was an unambiguous "Those jobs aren't coming back," he said according to a fellow dinner guest. Its interesting to note that Apple who is one of the best-known, and most imitated and admired companies on earth, makes $400,000 per employee, which is more then Goldman Sachs, Exxon Mobil, or even Google. Essentially it comes down to Apple's conviction that overseas factories and workers in terms of diligence and industrial skills have outpaced their American counterparts, and that "Made in the U.S.A" is not a viable option for most Apple products. Apple currently employs just 43,000 people in the United States and 20,000 overseas. The real grunt from there work force is the additional 700,000 contractors that engineer, build and assemble iPads, iPhones, and other Apple products for foreign companies located in Asia and Europe. Jared Bernstein, a former economic adviser to the White House has said "If it's the pinnacle of capitalism, we should be worried". It used to be American companies would once support American workers, even if it wasn't a good financial choice. It seems that those days are long gone with companies like Apple at the forefront, profits and efficiency are now far more important than generosity.

Apple executives say that going overseas, at this point, is their only option. One former executive described how the company relied upon a Chinese factory to revamp iPhone manufacturing just weeks before the device was due on shelves. Apple had redesigned the iPhone’s screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly line overhaul. New screens began arriving at the plant near midnight.

MSNBC Technology News

Posted by | Fri, Jan 27, 2012 - 04:03 PM