Apple's Initial Investment in U.S. Mac Production Estimated to Create 200 Jobs

My cynical mind

Both Steve Jobs and Tim Cook have stated that the reason manufacturing isn't done in the US is that we don't teach the skills in our schools anymore that are needed for these jobs. I've even heard them say that the education system would need to be reformed to bring manufacturing jobs to the US.

I have never understood this.

I in no way want to devalue to the service and work by people who work in manufacturing, but what are the skills they're talking about? Even if you had a background in engineering, you'd need the same on-the-job training for putting together an iPhone as anyone else.

Frankly, because this has always sounded like BS to me (and there perhaps is an angle of it I don't get), I was frustrated that Brian Williams didn't challenge Tim Cook when he repeated that famous explanation.

So, I started thinking to myself, if these are jobs which Americans are too ignorant to work at, presumably we'll be extending work visas to Chinese people who are educated in the ways of manufacturing to come to the US to work at this new factory.

Nonsense. Apple just moving $100M from one account to another probably affects 200 jobs. This is somebody pulling a number completely out of their ass with absolutely no details.

swingerofbirch said:

Both Steve Jobs and Tim Cook have stated that the reason manufacturing isn't done in the US is that we don't teach the skills in our schools anymore that are needed for these jobs.

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Actually Cook also said right in that same interview that one of the reasons is that the entire supply chain is centralized in China and there's so many specialized suppliers to choose from who can retool for special requests, prototype, and produce product extremely quickly. That's something that can't currently be done in the U.S. regardless of labor costs or labor eduction. Maybe it's possible to build that here but that's a very long term project that will certainly take more companies than just Apple buying into it.

Sponsored by Ritalin

Make it 300 or we won't even have a chance

Mr. Gates said:

Make it 300 or we won't even have a chance

Image

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You will never have a change



No but seriously we're all be jobless soon and thats a good thing.
The only problem is that the politicians YOU GUYS voted for have never told you that almost everything will be automated making this economy fall to pieces.
Nobody would have a job anymore and purchasing power is history.

As the factory will still be run by foxconn, what's the tax situation? Isn't foxconn primarily a Chinese company?

How long until Apple could set up their own factories without relying on 3rd party companies to run them etc? They have billions in the bank.. do any of you think they would consider going all American?

Is cook trying to score brownie points with Washington?

Abazigal said:

you get to tap into more skilled labour, and the absence of hordes of lowly-skilled workers is a non-issue anyways.

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This is wrong. Cook said that too: the problems with producing in usa is in usa don't have anymore enough skilled labour and school programs for this sort of jobs, while China with all the experience and quantity of production is very skilled.

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thundersteele said:

I doubt that these will be high paying jobs. It's just assembly.

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I can't know if these will be hugh paying jobs but Cook specified they won't do just assembly.

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swingerofbirch said:

and there perhaps is an angle of it I don't get

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Yes you don't get it What they mean is that economy changed in the last 10 years, these sort of jobs moved in the far east, they started built specialization while the west starting lose it. If you stop having mines, eventually you will stop having people capable of mining or schools that teach to mine because there is no more demand for jobs and so education, if you stop sewing etc. It's always been like this; after 10 or more years you left or moved abroad a field obviously you don't have workers specialized in that field, or courses to teach how to work in that field, or school that train the teachers and so on. It's an entire system that has to be rebuilt not just a factory.

How many people are going to return Macs now until they get one that was 'made in USA'!?

This domestic mfg. line is definitely better for one thing: secrecy. They can put a halt on any funny business unless an employee is purposefully malicious and soon fired.

You'd want that for the iPhone-Pad, but if this is just a MacPro line I doubt there are any trade secrets inside there.

Mr. Retrofire said:

Better than 200 cooks.

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Mostly lame jokes but yours definitely gave me a laugh. Almost as funny as Cook on NBC giving props to autocorrect

This is a good step for Apple and I think it is appreciated that they bring some jobs home. As long as they pick right to work states, this will be a win/win for Apple and its employees.

200 is better than zero,and like others said this could be a start to a turn around

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Fireball Dragon said:

How many people are going to return Macs now until they get one that was 'made in USA'!?

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Most custom built macs are built in the USA. Lets just hope the American made macs live up to their name

yearofthe said:

Better than no jobs.

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True. Plus, Apple has lots of employees in the US, from entry level (their retail stores) to well-paying (their headquarters). It's a start. It isn't as if we have a long history of manufacturing consumer electronics in this country.

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Fruit Cake said:

Is cook trying to score brownie points with Washington?

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Probably, as is just about every other CEO of a big company. There is a lot of rhetoric (from both sides) about companies "shipping jobs overseas," and this is one way to blunt that criticism.

I don't think it's purely a PR move. Cook mentioned that they have been working at it for some time now, with small experiments.

HMI said:

Or they may be cheap Chinese labor shipped here to work legally for much less money.

Unless those jobs go to American citizens, I'm merely intrigued, and not yet impressed. This needs to be more than a clever PR move.

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Interesting attitude. I live in a place where I can move freely from one country in a large area to another, whenever I want, and I have the right to find work in each of those countries. I'm resident in one country and citizen in another country, and nobody thinks that I shouldn't be allowed to work where I work.

But what is really stupid is your assumption that you can ship "cheap Chinese labor" to the USA. Salaries are always related to living cost. That "cheap Chinese labor", often people who work very hard for two years and then return to their village as rich people, would starve on those same Chinese wages if they lived in the USA. So their salaries would be automatically an awful lot higher, just by moving to the USA.

92jlee said:

As the factory will still be run by foxconn, what's the tax situation? Isn't foxconn primarily a Chinese company?

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So? Employees pay taxes on their salaries where they live. Companies pay taxes where they trade. Ownership of the company doesn't matter.

200 jobs? That's a disgrace. Richest company in the world that doesnt even know what to do with its own money.

Bring all the jobs back to the US.

That's no PR move.

The labor costs in China are slowly rising, not as fast as they should, but they rise. At some point they will be too high to justify a production overseas. Note that the production overseas is a huge effort. There is a certain point where low labor costs is not enough to cancel out the duties etc.

I remember some physicist from VW (Volkswagen) talking about how economic logic seems extremely irrational often. One of his examples was particularly striking:
VW wanted to move the production to Russia. They had some negotiations with the officials about the duties and eventually the result was that Russia wanted, say, X EUR for the import of a fully assembled car and Y EUR for the import in pieces (X>>Y). So the job was to calculate what's more cost efficient: Transporting the car as a whole to Russia and pay X EUR or disassemble the car in Germany, pay Y EUR for transport in pieces and reassemble it in Russia. Fun fact: It was the latter one. Although in an ecologic sense it's a catastrophe. So there are people in Germany who disassemble cars for the sole purpose to be able to reassemble them in Russia. That must be the most depressing job ever.

What I want to say: It's pretty complicated, and there are people whose job it is to solely calculate what's more cost efficient. There are many variables and if Apple is moving production to USA one of them has changed enough to affect this decision.

Quu said:

And knowing Apple they will want to be eco about it so expect a huge solar and/or wind farm to be built near the factory also which again will help the green energy sector.

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What is ironic is that low natural gas prices have made the US much more competitive for manufacturing internationally. If Apple uses higher-priced energy, they will lose that advantage.

How many Macs are produced annually? Is 1 Million a large proportion of them?

Another advantage of domestic production is lower shipping costs for the finished goods. Which Macs are heaviest? The 24 inch iMacs or the Mac Pros? Dollars per pound, how about the MiniMacs?

I'm very curious which ones will be made here.

thleeal said:

no everyone cares for hand made anymore.
we want it cheap, we want it perfect, we want it now.

"the world is only what we have made it into,
if you dont like what you see,
You've only yourself to blame."

i actually agree with you, i think generally humanity is moving in a direction where it values machines more than life. it tells a story of our failure to love one another.

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This is Luddite thinking. There were similar sentiments expressed when automated looms came into being, which replaced hundreds or thousands of textile workers. One tractor can till more land in a day than tens of farm workers with hoes. One steamshovel can dig more in a week than a hundred men.

The issue is not new. How we deal with it is not new. The outcome will not be new. The issue has been with us since rivers were tapped for hydropower at the beginnings of the industrial revolution. It again reared its head when the steam engine was developed. And electricity accelerated the pace of change.

Capital replaces labor. It is the way of capitalism. Production efficiencies yield more value with less inputs, creating a bigger surplus. Distribution of the surplus is the biggest issue - does the surplus go exclusively to the capitalist? Or are there other interested segments of society who should reap some of the benefits? Consumers certainly, but what do we do with the displaced workers?

At one point, we decreed that any labor over 40 hours needed to be paid time and one-half, creating more jobs for people. Maybe a solution is to change that to 30 or 35? Maybe a tax on production machinery that is used for worker retraining?

Efficient production should lead to more total wealth. That is the whole point. But if the wealth goes only to a small proportion of the population, leaving large numbers unemployed, then new problems are created, which could (and perhaps, which must be) be dealt with as new opportunities.

Hopefully they will open in a right to work state without unions. Did Foxconn apply for their Obamacare waiver yet? I want to be able to still afford Apple products.

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Steviejobz said:

200 jobs? That's a disgrace. Richest company in the world that doesnt even know what to do with its own money.

Bring all the jobs back to the US.

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Yeah, so iPhones cost 3 grand, iPads 5 grand and iMacs are 10k? Good plan.

swingerofbirch said:

Both Steve Jobs and Tim Cook have stated that the reason manufacturing isn't done in the US is that we don't teach the skills in our schools anymore that are needed for these jobs. I've even heard them say that the education system would need to be reformed to bring manufacturing jobs to the US.

I have never understood this.

I in no way want to devalue to the service and work by people who work in manufacturing, but what are the skills they're talking about? Even if you had a background in engineering, you'd need the same on-the-job training for putting together an iPhone as anyone else.

Frankly, because this has always sounded like BS to me (and there perhaps is an angle of it I don't get), I was frustrated that Brian Williams didn't challenge Tim Cook when he repeated that famous explanation.

So, I started thinking to myself, if these are jobs which Americans are too ignorant to work at, presumably we'll be extending work visas to Chinese people who are educated in the ways of manufacturing to come to the US to work at this new factory.

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Bunk. Got a link to those statements you claim Jobs and Cook made?

Mak47 said:

Agreed.

Apple isn't even going to run the facility, it's going to be Foxconn.

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Great, so the jobs aren't even with Apple but instead a Chinese company?

strausd said:

This is definitely just going to be the Mac Pro.

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So are you speculating that we won't see an update for the Mac Pro until this facility is finished, and ready for business?

I can't wait until Apple announces the location of this new plant. It'll be in a right to work state with relatively low tax rates. The hipster, union-thug, and elitist lefties will be in a tizzy.