Apple has consistently been the most efficient of the major U.S. technology companies when measured on revenue generated per employee – some $2.4 million annually.
Apple generated around $2.4 million in revenue per employee in its latest fiscal year and has averaged around $2.1 million on the same metric over the past five years, according to FactSet.
That far outstrips Facebook-owner Meta, which generated $1.35 million in revenue per employee in 2022 — below its five-year average of $1.5 million. Apple also consistently beats Amazon, Microsoft, and Google-parent Alphabet on the same metric, all of which have announced major layoffs in recent months.
“Apple never hired aggressively through the pandemic and doesn’t need to go through extensive head count reductions unlike peers,” analysts at Evercore wrote in a recent research note. “We continue to think consumer staples and/or high-end luxury companies remain the relevant peer group for Apple.”
MacDailyNews Take: Apple’s fiscally prudent hiring practices go back to Steve Jobs and serve the company well through economic downturns.
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I blame Tim
It’s amazing how statistics can be skewed when you don’t count the people actually making all your products as members of your staff. Add in the hundreds of thousands of workers in China and elsewhere, and that magic “revenue-per-employee” figure doesn’t look so incredible. Just saying…
Those aren’t Apple’s employees. Why would a contracted service providers employees count? That’s like counting every USPS employee as a part of Amazon because they deliver most of the packages.
Actually, the better analogy would be if Amazon farmed out their warehouse employees to a third-party (as many companies do with cleaning crews and other low-wage job categories) and then touted their increased revenue-per-employee stats.
Imagine if Ford or Tesla decided to spin-off their assembly-line workers to a separate shell corporation, and then boasted how much their revenue-per-employee stats had soared. It’s a meaningless statistic if some companies consider their production workers as staff, and others can farm it out to save on ancillary costs (benefits, health insurance, recruitment, etc.)
I’m not saying it’s not a smart business move, but to use the statistic as meaningful is just silly.
To use another analogy, it’s like comparing movie grosses from 1980s to today, and ignoring the fact that movie tickets have gone from $3 and $4, to tickets today topping $15 in most urban markets (and upwards of $25 or more for Imax and Dolby Cinema screens). Of COURSE today’s movies will gross more. Again, it’s a meaningless statistic.