Apple declares in a new report that it is responsible for creating nearly 35,000 jobs across North Carolina. The tech giant maintains multiple operations in the state, including retail stores and a mammoth data facility west of Charlotte.

The tech giant also said it is launching a $1 billion fund aimed at creating more jobs in the U.S.

The strategy appears aimed at complicating efforts by President Donald Trump and other politicians to vilify Apple for using companies in China and elsewhere to assemble most of its products, according to The Associated Press.

In releasing state-by-state jobs totals, Apple is running counter to many corporations, such as IBM, which won’t even say how many employees they have in the U.S. IBM stopped disclosing numbers by country and states years ago, citing competitive reasons, although the company had come under much criticism for laying off American workers and offshoring jobs.

Breaking down NC jobs

In North Carolina, only 1,148 jobs come directly from Apple.

The remaining 33,500 come from business derived through Apple, such as its app stores where entrepreneurs and companies sell a variety of goods and services.

Even at nearly 35,000, however, North Carolina-linked Apple jobs still number fewer than the 36,786 direct Apple employees based in California.

Apple also says it works with 173 suppliers of goods and services, including materials produced at seven manufacturing facilities.

Among those is Greensboro-based wireless and semiconductor technology firm Qorvo, which helps Apple devices linked to WiFi networks.

The report also sites several apps developed in North Carolina.

Two of its retail stores are based in the Triangle – one in Raleigh at Crabtree Valley Mall, the other in Durham at Streets of Southpoint.

Overall, Apple says it is responsible for 2 million jobs across the country, including 80,000 company employees. Another 450,000 jobs are linked to Apple suppliers. The remainder are “attributable to the App Store ecosystem,” Apple noted.

Apple will provide more details when it announces its first investment by the end of the month, CEO Tim Cook told CNBC. Apple’s initial billion-dollar investment amounts to a tiny fraction of its $257 billion in cash.

Cook also promised that Apple will hire “thousands of employees, thousands more in the future” in the U.S., although he didn’t specify how quickly that will happen. Apple’s U.S. payroll has grown roughly 40-fold since 1998, when it had 5,000 U.S. workers.

Read the full report at:

https://www.apple.com/job-creation/

(The Associated Press contributed to this report.)