90,000 is not an impressively low number of jobs. It makes Apple one of the 40-50 largest employers in the US and one of the five largest US tech employers.
Back in January Apple publicly announced their plans for repatriation. While Apple doesn't give routine updates on exactly what it's doing with every dollar of cash it holds, they've stopped accumulating debt and have begun reducing it. Previously, for years, they were aggressively accumulating debt to fund their capital return programs (which require immense sums of capital in the US in one form or another). To fund that they either have to use debt in the US or have the domestic cash holdings to cover it.
"Apple Inc. said it will bring hundreds of billions of overseas dollars back to the U.S., pay about $38 billion in taxes on the money and spend tens of billions on domestic jobs, manufacturing and data centers in the coming years."
"Apple has the largest offshore cash reserves of any U.S. company, with about $252 billion at the end of September, the most recently reported fiscal quarter. The tax rate indicates that Apple is likely bringing back a majority of its overseas cash back to the U.S., leaving only a small portion for international investments like retail stores."
You didn’t mention it, but I thought I’d bring it up: the majority of those 90,000 jobs are in retail, not corporate. So they’re not necessarily “tech” jobs.
Are you sure? Wikipedia says Apple has 271 stores in the US. For your claim to be true, the average Apple store in the US would have to employ at least 45,001/271 = 166.1 people.
Back in January Apple publicly announced their plans for repatriation. While Apple doesn't give routine updates on exactly what it's doing with every dollar of cash it holds, they've stopped accumulating debt and have begun reducing it. Previously, for years, they were aggressively accumulating debt to fund their capital return programs (which require immense sums of capital in the US in one form or another). To fund that they either have to use debt in the US or have the domestic cash holdings to cover it.
"Apple Inc. said it will bring hundreds of billions of overseas dollars back to the U.S., pay about $38 billion in taxes on the money and spend tens of billions on domestic jobs, manufacturing and data centers in the coming years."
"Apple has the largest offshore cash reserves of any U.S. company, with about $252 billion at the end of September, the most recently reported fiscal quarter. The tax rate indicates that Apple is likely bringing back a majority of its overseas cash back to the U.S., leaving only a small portion for international investments like retail stores."
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-17/apple-exp...