Apple Claims 2 Million Jobs Created Across 50 U.S. States - MacRumors
Skip to Content

Apple Claims 2 Million Jobs Created Across 50 U.S. States

by

Apple updated its website on Wednesday with U.S. job creation numbers from 2016, revealing that the company has generated a total of 2 million jobs across all 50 states.

Last year saw Apple spend more than $50 billion with 9,000 U.S. suppliers and manufacturers, and create around 90,000 supplier and manufacturer jobs, bringing the total number to 450,000 jobs, up from 361,000 in 2015. Meanwhile the number of people directly employed by Apple rose to 80,000, up from 76,000 in the previous year.

Screen Shot 1 1
Across the U.S., 29 cities are home to at least 250 Apple employees, while 44 states have an Apple Store. Apple says it has seen a 28x increase in employment outside of California since 2000, with a 1,500 percent growth in U.S. employees as a whole since 1998.

Software-wise, Apple states that 1,530,000 U.S. jobs could be linked to the App Store ecosystem, an increase of 130,000 from 2015. U.S. developers were said to have earned $16 billion from sales since the App Store was launched in 2008.

The dedicated web page also provides a state-by-state breakdown of the above figures and highlights some of Apple's major U.S. investments, including its Cupertino headquarters, data centers in North Carolina, Oregon, and Reno, and campuses in Arizona and Texas.

The website changes come on the same day CEO Tim Cook announced that Apple is creating a new $1 billion fund for advanced manufacturing, in a further effort to promote U.S. job creation.

Top Rated Comments

117 months ago
I create jobs too! Tons of jobs linked to me!

I buy food.
I **** in the toilet. The infrastructure and it runs to the wate disposal plant.
I take the train to work!
Eat prepared food!
Throw out garbage, more jobs!

Im a job creator!
Score: 20 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Rogifan Avatar
117 months ago
What's the source for this 2M figure? Apple buys glass from Corning therefore anyone who works at Corning is a job created because of Apple? Seriously?
Score: 8 Votes (Like | Disagree)
smacrumon Avatar
117 months ago
The "statistics" on Apple's website are complete rubbish! Apple can't claim 1.53 million US jobs as their own creation.

99% of those “US jobs attributable to the App Store ecosystem” are casual/part time, self made developers struggling to make a cent. These individuals were also already coding and writing apps well before Apple came along.

Apple needs to provide a full breakdown of App Store profits, and who is making the total sum of the profits. I’d argue 99% of those in the Apple Store ecosystem are making less than 1% of the profits.

Complete utter rubbish. All Apple can claim is 80k direct Apple employees, that’s it. If Apple wants to talk supplier employees, then let’s get real and talk about 1 million employees at Apple’s offshore Chinese and other overseas factories. That's where the majority of Apple's employees work if we're talking about "jobs attributable" and other such nonsense.

The clues to the truth is actually found in what Apple omits and does not include in the discussion. Apple lies to customers so much it’s disgraceful. The stats on Apple's website are completely flimsy and the production of an ametuer marketing team. The stats completely discredit the Apple brand, they are totally bogus.
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)
ILikeAllOS Avatar
117 months ago
Oh please MacRumors, can you bring back the down vote option.
Why would you want to downvote him anyway?
He's right.
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
simonmet Avatar
117 months ago
I don't for a second believe 1.5 million people in the US earn their living through the App Store and the App Store alone. App Store earnings are heavily skewed to the largest and most profitable developers. Most will earn a moderate amount of pocket money at best.

This is pretty blatant spin even for Apple. I'd like to see a Fact Checker take on their claim. I'm sure it would score "highly dubious" if not "blatantly false".

And Apple claim they want to combat alternative facts? How about they start combatting their own?

Often games are ported to iOS relatively quickly and easily because of engines like Unity. So does that mean income from those apps created those jobs and if so how does Apple estimate how many? The page contains no information on how they came up with this estimate. No doubt a very liberal and superficial approach was taken to their employment estimates, if not plucking a number out of thin air to make nice and impressive sounding 2 million figure. If this was a scholarly article it would be laughed at and thrown in the bin.

The thing is, half a million jobs isn't bad at all. Pretty god-damned impressive actually. Why the need even to inflate it to 2 million? Half a million real jobs is way better than reporting 2 million of which three-quarters are indirect/maybe/possibly jobs. Then there's the nearly half a million "supplier jobs" they say they created too. I wonder how they audited that!

It's beyond arrogant of Apple to say they created the jobs of these developers or suppliers. Indirectly enabled some no doubt but not created.

This is marketing PR meant to lobby Washington. Nothing more.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
RichTF Avatar
117 months ago
I create jobs too! Tons of jobs linked to me!
Complete utter rubbish. All Apple can claim is 80k direct Apple employees, that’s it. If Apple wants to talk supplier employees, then let’s get real and talk about 1 million employees at Apple’s offshore Chinese and other overseas factories. That's where the majority of Apple's employees work if we're talking about "jobs attributable" and other such nonsense.
What's the source for this 2M figure? Apple buys glass from Corning therefore anyone who works at Corning is a job created because of Apple? Seriously?
If you go to their webpage and actually read it, they do provide sources for these numbers. Admittedly I lack the economics background to validate them personally, but the footnote for "suppliers" includes this:
Analysis Group analyzed Apple’s impact on the U.S. job market and economy by using information on the total amount Apple spent on goods and services in the U.S. in 2016, and applying that information to Type-1 employment multipliers developed by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis
Which, to me, sounds like it's based on the amount they spend with those suppliers, so they're not just assuming that every single employee job there has been "created" by Apple. Anyone with a more economics-y background able to shed more light on this?

It's fine to have a go at Apple for just making up nonsense if that's what they're actually doing, but you should at least read the information they're making available first. C'mon people — this is a perfect example of the sort of automatic knee-jerk Apple-bashing and negativity that people here complain about!
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)

Popular Stories

Tim Cook Rainbow

Apple CEO Tim Cook Stepping Down, John Ternus Taking Over

Monday April 20, 2026 1:33 pm PDT by
Apple CEO Tim Cook is stepping down as Apple's chief executive officer, and hardware engineering chief John Ternus is set to take over, Apple announced today. Cook will continue on as Apple CEO through the summer, with Ternus set to join Apple's Board of Directors and take over as CEO on September 1, 2026. Cook is going to transition to executive chairman, and he will "assist with certain...
Four iPhone 18 Pro Colors Mock Feature

iPhone 18 Pro Launching in September With These 10 New Features

Monday April 20, 2026 7:13 am PDT by
While the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max are not launching until September, there are already plenty of rumors about the devices. It was initially reported that the iPhone 18 Pro models would have fully under-screen Face ID, with only a front camera visible in the top-left corner of the screen. However, the latest rumors indicate that only one Face ID component will be moved under the...
macOS 27 on MacBook Pro

macOS 27 Will Mark the End of an Era

Saturday April 18, 2026 6:45 am PDT by
During its Platforms State of the Union segment at WWDC 2025, Apple revealed that macOS 26 Tahoe is the final major macOS version for Intel-based Macs. The upcoming macOS 27 release will be compatible with Apple silicon Macs only, meaning that you will need a Mac with an M-series chip or a MacBook Neo with an A18 Pro chip in order to install the software update. macOS 27 should be available...