Apple is about to give the U.S. economy a huge boost in the form of a $350 billion five-year investment. As part of that, it will commit $55 billion this year alone and plans on adding 20,000 new jobs over that time frame. Following in the footsteps of Amazon, it also plans to add a new campus somewhere in the U.S. this year.
There is a lot of news here. Let’s start with the big-picture investment of $350 billion, which Apple says does not include ongoing tax payments, the tax revenues generated from employees’ wages or the sale of Apple products.
It will, however, involve taxes on repatriation of some of Apple’s cash reserves, which are currently in the $256 billion range. It anticipates $38 billion coming from repatriation taxes, but much of it will be capital expenditures on the part of the company.
For starters, there will be $30 billion, which will help fund a number of projects, including building the aforementioned new campus. The plan is for this to initially house technical support for customers. Apple says it will announce the location of this new facility later this year, with a plan to make the building run on 100 percent renewable energy sources.
But wait, it’s not done yet. It will also invest $10 billion of that money in new data centers in the U.S., adding to the seven already in operation or planned. There is a new one coming in Iowa and they broke ground on one in Reno just today, in addition to data centers already in operation in North Carolina, Oregon, Nevada and Arizona. (This number includes co-location facilities not owned and operated by Apple.)
The company also plans to expand the advanced manufacturing fund it started last spring, from $1 billion to $5 billion. The idea is to bring advanced manufacturing jobs to the heartland and it is already funding projects in Kentucky and rural Texas.
Finally, Apple plans to expand its coding initiatives, helping students and teachers from K-12 and at community colleges across the country learn valuable coding skills.
While there is clearly a large public relations element to this announcement, the amount of money and investment involved from a private company here is just staggering, and should help create new jobs, stimulate local economies and help educate students for the next generation of jobs. Hard not to like that.