Fact-checkers are scrambling to determine whether or not President Trump spoke truthfully when he said that he "opened a major Apple Manufacturing plant in Texas that will bring high paying jobs back to America."
It turns out that the plant has been open for nearly six years, and Apple ($AAPL) has been hiring for that plant for at least that long, as we can see in hiring data for that location.
Apple has been ramping up its Austin presence for some time now, given the area's talent pool and thriving cultural scene. It began construction on a state-of-the-art billion-dollar campus recently and has been launching new facilities in the city for some time now, as the above hiring data indicates.
In fact, Apple hiring in Austin is at its highest level yet, with 314 openings, a majority of which are indeed focused on Hardware followed by Software and Services.
It's possible that Trump was confused about how things went down, or what his aides told him. The facility that the President toured in Austin, the Flextronics plant, has been producing Mac Pro computers since 2013. While Apple did plan to move assembly of the computer to China, a last-minute tariff exemption convinced Tim Cook and co to keep things going at the Austin plant.
About the Data:
Thinknum tracks companies using the information they post online - jobs, social and web traffic, product sales and app ratings - and creates data sets that measure factors like hiring, revenue and foot traffic. Data sets may not be fully comprehensive (they only account for what is available on the web), but they can be used to gauge performance factors like staffing and sales.
Further Reading:
- Tariffs or not, Apple has been on an Austin hiring spree since April 2019
- Apple hiring in Austin since August jumped 76%
- Apple hiring is up 22%, but way down in China as tariffs loom
