Those Chinese sure have nimble fingers!
Posted on 05/15/2019 4:19:21 AM PDT by Kaslin
The workers who assemble Apple iPhones make a starting wage of $3.15 per hour in the People's Republic of China, according to The New York Times.
"Apple has said the starting pay for workers at the world's biggest iPhone factory, in Zhengzhou, China, is about $3.15 an hour," The Times reported in a story published two weeks ago.
That $3.15 per hour is less than half the U.S. minimum wage of $7.25 per hour.
That means a teenager working part-time serving Big Macs at a McDonald's in the American Midwest earns a far bigger hourly wage than a Chinese adult hired full-time to build iPhones in the People's Republic.
A 2018 Congressional Research Service report on the U.S.-China trade relationship summarized Apple's supply chain and its production of the iPhone.
"According to Apple Corporation, it used over 200 corporate suppliers with nearly 900 facilities located around the world," said CRS. "The top five largest country sources of these facilities in 2017 were China (358), Japan (137), the United States (64), Taiwan (55) and South Korea (34)."
"Apple iPhones are mainly assembled in China by Taiwanese companies (Foxconn and Pegatron) using a number of intermediate goods imported from abroad (or in many cases, intermediates made by foreign firms in China)," said CRS.
In 2016, The New York Times published an in-depth story about the Foxconn facility that assembles iPhones in Zhengzhou.
"Running at full tilt, the factory here, owned and operated by Apple's manufacturing partner Foxconn, can produce 500,000 iPhones a day," reported The Times. "Locals now refer to Zhengzhou as 'iPhone City.'"
"The local government has proved instrumental, doling out more than $1.5 billion to Foxconn to build large sections of the factory and nearby employee housing," said The Times.
"It helps cover continuing energy and transportation costs for the operation," said The Times. "It recruits workers for the assembly line. It pays bonuses to the factory for meeting export targets. All of it in support of iPhone production."
Is this free enterprise?
Is the Apple iPhone an American product?
Apple's relationship with the United States of America and American workers helps illuminate some trends in the modern American economy.
The United States normalized relations with the People's Republic of China in 1979 and gave it most-favored-nation status the next year, according to CRS. In 1985, the first year for which the Census Bureau has published U.S.-China trade data online, the U.S. ran a $6,000,000 merchandise trade deficit with China. That equaled approximately $13,791,382 in December 2018 dollars (adjusted using the Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator).
In 2018, according to the Census Bureau, the U.S. ran a $419,162,000,000 merchandise trade deficit with China.
That means that in inflation-adjusted dollars, our merchandise trade deficit with China was 30,393 times bigger last year than it was 33 years before then.
Who is winning this competition?
In January 1980, the year we extended most-favored-nation status to the People's Republic of China, there were 19,282,000 Americans employed in manufacturing, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This January, there were only 12,826,000. As our population and economy grew, we lost 6,456,000 manufacturing jobs.
At the same time America was losing manufacturing jobs, Americans who did not attend college were losing income.
In 1980, according to the Census Bureau Table H-14, American households where the householder was 25 and older and had finished four years of high school but not attended college had a median income of $55,777 in constant 2017 dollars.
In 2017, according to Table H-13, households where the householder was 25 and older and had graduated from high school but not attended college had a median income of $44,970 in constant 2017 dollars.
From 1980 to 2017, the real median income of households headed by Americans who completed high school but did not attend college dropped by $10,807 -- or about 19.4 percent.
Those American householders now have little hope of getting a job assembling an iPhone -- unless they can somehow get a Chinese work visa and move to Zhengzhou.
And even if they were to do so, as The New York Times reported, they would join a workforce whose wages start at $3.15 per hour.
The U.S. Constitution united the American people in a vast free-trade zone that was coterminous with our international borders. It gave Congress the power to impose duties on foreign imports.
It did not envision creating a free-trade zone between this free republic and a People's Republic.
Now it's just set-top-boxes and WIFI routers that are done this way by your kindly ISP folks.
Those Chinese sure have nimble fingers!
In terms of cost-of-living how does that $3.15/hr. wage in China compare with U.S. prices & wages?
You were overpaid.
:)
OK that’s fine but then WTF are they a gazillion dollars?
The hysteria here in the US among corporations is a one dollar raise across the board equals a quadrillion dollars in hits to earnings.
#### em. Hit em with a tariff to sell them here.
I don’t give a #### what the different cost of living is.
Sounds like FR is swinging back to “free market at any cost” thinking.
That was quick.
The sad part is Trump would flip about this so why did those who this bothers so much, it being reported, vote or him?
>>Those Chinese sure have nimble fingers!<<
Yea...right? This was my bread and butter for years at a fortune 100 electronics corp., that is until our government allowed the greatest transfer of wealth in world history from the American middle class to communist China.
At least I can say, we didn’t have to place nets around the top of our buildings to keep workers from committing suicide from stress, low wages, constant 16 hour shifts.
Boycott Chinese goods y’all. Buy American made products.
Do we know how many assembly hours there are per phone?
What I don’t get is why someone doesn’t make the case against globally shipping pollution costs on all this stuff made in Asia generally. We know lots of stuff gets mailed by the UN’s special developing-country rates for less than US products can be mailed domestically, which is an issue into urself, but so much gets shipped by massively pollutive freighter that no greenies should approve of.
You think $3.15 per hour is low? Think $140 or $80 per MONTH in Cambodia and Myanmar.
The fabric mills are still spitting out the material in China but most of the rag trade is leaving for greener pastures. Low cost labor countries are constantly seeking new companies to come to their shores. Labor costs are low because the cost of living for their citizens are quite modest. So the people are happy to have the jobs which afford them a better standard of living than they would have back on the rural farm.
https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/rankings_by_country.jsp
https://theaseanpost.com/article/minimum-wage-across-southeast-asia
Most of those trendy threads are assembled in South Central Asia or Southeast Asia because the labor costs are extremely low.
Some of the suburbs of Hanoi could be called "Samsung City" or "LG City" because of all the phones being assembled there. The parts are largely of Chines origin but final assembly, testing and packaging are done in Vietnam.
Prices aren't going down for name brand clothing and shoes in America, but the companies continue to search for the lowest cost assembly.
India, Vietnam, Myanmar. It's all about the cost of labor for these unskilled jobs which are not location dependent.
So? I am one that does not care. Why should I? Communist China is still Communist China.
Screw'em.
FMCDH(BITS)
As much as I despise Apple, spit, one must ask what the average wage is there. I’m sure it’s all a wash.
What is the deal with asians wearing surgical face masks?
Is it some kind of mass hysteria thing over germs.
My old asian neighbors wore those things every time they left the house.
What a way to live...
Bring manufacturing home.
The should be made here. If you don’t agree then you are a Free Traitor™.
Jack Welch once horrified people by half-seriously saying GE should build factories on big ships and just pull into harbor at whichever country had the cheapest labor at the time. The truth is not so much different for some manufacturing operations which are not capital-intense. For instance, garments. A factory full of sewing machines can be moved over a weekend.
In China, they call Chinese food.....food.
I have learned from TV that the Chinese have as much of a problem eating noodles with chop sticks as I do.
I’m curious when leftist crap news will actually notice that wages are on the rise in the U.s. and stop acting like the rest of the world needs our attention.
[The reality is, phones cost next to nothing to manufacture and phone companies do not pay very much for these phones. They sell them at exorbitant prices or charge customers monthly to have a phone. ]
[OK that’s fine but then WTF are they a gazillion dollars?]
----------------
In the factories it's very dusty (and Noisy if you ever visit one). They likely wear one to keep down the issues with inhaling all the dust and lint?
I asked "she who cooks my dinner" about the mask wearing on the street, they do it where I am retired quite often, and she said something along the same line: keeps out street dust and smells I guess? She said some ladies do it when they have a cold or flu so they don't spread it to others around them, but I'm not sure about that last part.
You see it all the time flying on airplanes with East Asians. I expect that is to prevent picking up disease from other travelers on crowded airplanes which is probably a good idea?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.