There has been a lot of media attention placed on Apple and the conditions for workers at Foxconn, their Chinese manufacturing partner. Petitions have been signed in protest of perceived poor working conditions, and even Donald Trump has spoken up to declare that Apple should make their products in the United States.
Without getting in to the argument for or against Apple’s use of manufacturing firms like Foxconn, CultofMac rightly points out that, despite what most of the media has been reporting, the majority of the work that goes into Apple products is done in the U.S. In fact, according to Forbes, only $10 per iPhone goes to manufacturing overseas.
A report written by three U.S. professors showed that only about “$10 or less in direct labor wages goes into an iPhone or iPad is paid to Chinese workers.” The report points out that while Apple products — including components — are manufactured in China, the primary benefits go to the U.S. economy because Apple continues to keep most of its product design, software development, product management, marketing and other high-wage functions in the U.S., not China. China’s role is more of an assembler.
Ultimately, all of the engineering, design, thought, and creative work that goes into Apple’s products are produced by domestic factories. The only involvement Foxconn has in Apple’s manufacturing chain is actually slapping the finished product together. All of the design, marketing, and engineering work are performed by well-paid U.S. employees. As for the components inside of Apple’s products – the pressure should be going to the specific manufacturers involved.
And as far as the assembly goes, Steve Jobs had plenty to say on the topic. Page 546 of Walter Isaacson’s recent biography (during a discussion with President Barack Obama) portrays Jobs stating that there simply aren’t enough such workers in any one place in America to hire:
When Jobs’s turn came [to talk to President Obama at a dinner with other Silicon Valley CEOs], he stressed the need for more trained engineers and suggested that any foreign students who earned an engineering degree in the United States should be given a visa to stay in the country. […] He went on to urge that a way be found to train more American engineers. Apple had 700,000 factory workers employed in China, he said, and that was because it needed 30,000 engineers on-site to support those workers. “You can’t find that many in America to hire,” he said. These factory engineers did not have to be PhDs or geniuses; they simply needed to have basic engineering skills for manufacturing.
In reality, the situation is not one of Apple exploiting underprivileged Chinese workers just to save some money. They’re outsourcing manufacturing. A small percentage of the work that goes into their products, and work that there aren’t enough Americans in any one place to actually do.