Apple releases new job creation numbers, says it’s already responsible for 2 million U.S. jobs

Apple updated its U.S. job creation web page today with figures from 2016. Though Apple refreshes the site every year, this latest update coincides with CEO Tim Cook’s announcement during a CNBC interview that the company has formed a $1 billion fund to promote advanced manufacturing jobs in the U.S.

Though the fund may help the company gain favor with the current presidential administration, Apple has already been investing in U.S. hardware manufacturing for years (for example, its 2013 Mac Pros were built in Texas with U.S.-made components).

In total, Apple says it has created a total of two million jobs in the U.S. so far. Last year it spent more than $50 billion with 9,000 U.S. suppliers and manufacturers and added about 90,000 supplier and manufacturer jobs, increasing the total number to 450,000 jobs from 361,000 in 2015.

The number of people directly employed by Apple, including at its retail stores, grew from 76,000 to 80,000 in 2016.

On the software side, Apple claims that 1,530,000 U.S. jobs can be attributed to the App Store ecosystem, up from 1,400,000 in 2015. Since the App Store was launched in 2008, U.S. developers have earned $16 billion from sales, with 39 percent of that amount generated from abroad.

Apple also said that all of its main products (the iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and Apple TV) contain materials from the U.S. or are made with equipment from U.S. suppliers). It has reportedly asked its main manufacturing partners, including Foxconn, to open more factories in the U.S.

During the CNBC interview, Cook told Jim Cramer that the company will hire “thousands of employees” and is “not satisfied with just two million.”

“By doing that, we can be the ripple in the pond,” Cook said. “Because if we can create many manufacturing jobs around–those manufacturing jobs create more jobs around them, because you have a service industry that builds up around them.”