Most of the production for Apple's products are done outside the United States. Is that a good or bad outcome for Americans? Focusing on the labor, it seems as though United States lose these jobs that are outsources overseas. Around 700,000 people work for Apple's contractors, most notably Foxconn. The factory in Shenzhen alone employs 430,000 workers. It's been cited that the necessary skills are more easily found in Asia than the United States. Apple's analysts estimated that it would take nine months to find the necessary number of engineers to oversee and guide the assembly lines; in China, it took 15 days.
But it's not an entirely a loss for United States. Apple is able to charge its products relatively cheaply and retain enormous amount of profit as a result of utilizing the labor in China. As a comparison, Apple retained a whopping 23.95% profit margin in 2011, while Hewlett-Packard (NYSE:HPQ) only had 5.56% and Dell (NASDAQ:DELL) 4.28%. This wealth has benefited individual investors and pension plans. Furthermore, the price of the Apple products would be higher if they were made in United States. Estimates put additional $65 into each iPhone made with US labor. While Apple can still maintain a profit with that increase, it is unsure how much of that hike in input prices will be pushed onto the consumers. However, the bigger issue is still the availability of skillful labor.
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