Will Apple’s $1 Billion Manufacturing Investment Bring Jobs or More Robots?

Apple is one of the biggest job creators in the United States, responsible for two million jobs in all 50 states.

Last year, Apple spent over $50 billion with more than 9,000 U.S. suppliers and manufacturers.

Apple directly or indirectly supports hundreds of thousands of U.S. jobs, they work with manufacturing locations in 38 states and more than 9,000 suppliers in all 50 states.

On Wednesday, in an interview with CNBC, Apple CEO Tim Cook announced that the tech giant is launching a $1 billion fund to invest in advanced manufacturing companies in the United States, announcing its first investment later this month.

“By doing that we can be the ripple in the pond, those manufacturing jobs create jobs around them.”

Cook's statement is accurate, and according to the National Association of Manufacturers, for every $1 invested in manufacturing, $1.81 is injected back into the economy.

“When you talk about why this matters, not only is it the billion investment, but the multiplier effect around it,” says Brian Raymond, director of innovation policy at NAM.

As Jamie Condliffe reported for MIT Technology Review;

advanced manufacturing - with all of its automation and super-efficiencies - can certainly bring productivity gains. But it won’t bring back manufacturing jobs. Just last month we finally got some hard numbers on the impact of automation on the labor force in our factories and warehouses: more robots bring with them decreased employment and lower wages. So if Apple’s focus is indeed going to be on using robotics, it’s not going to be good for the workforce.

It’s perhaps no wonder, then, that Tim Cook appeared to play up the wider effects of boosting the industry when he announced the news, explaining that “manufacturing jobs create more jobs around them because you have a service industry that builds up around them.”

Apple certainly has enough cash with which to experiment outside its own domain. But you can expect at least some if to be channeled toward the automation of hardware manufacturing.

The firm has shown off an iPhone recycling robot in the past, and there’s no reason that couldn’t be turned into something that puts devices together instead of taking them apart.

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