Apple's Genius Idea: Raises for Employees

Apple's trying harder to look like a pro-America company, giving all of its retail employees raises, according to The Wall Street Journal's Ian Sherr.

Apple's trying harder to look like a pro-America company, giving all of its retail employees raises, reports The Wall Street Journal's Ian Sherr. Making all of its products in China, Apple doesn't have the best reputation as an All-American company. But, it's trying harder, and with $39.2 billion in revenue last year, it can certainly afford to do it. Sherr doesn't say how much of a bump Apple is offering its salespeople and Genius bar experts, but Business Insider's Dylan Love has one source citing $4-an-hour figure. Though, other sources told him that's not an across the board figure. Apple store employees now make between $9 to $15 an hour at the sales level, and up to about $30 an hour at the Genius bar, notes Sherr.

This should not only make Apple workers happier bees, but make Apple look a little more patriotic. As the biggest, richest company out there, Apple gets flack for outsourcing all of its manufacturing to China. (See next week's Time Magazine, for instance.) Apple will never move that big part of its company to America, as The New York Times' Charles Duhigg and Keith Bradsher explained earlier this year, but Apple still likes us to think it does America good. In an earlier attempt to fix its bad reputation, Apple put out a report claiming it has created over 500,000 American jobs. That, however, got picked apart quite quickly. So now Apple's doing something concrete, investing some of its cash-pile into its U.S. workforce. Good job, Apple.

Since CEO Tim Cook took over, Apple has made an effort to smooth the few rough edges that Steve Jobs didn't really care about. These raises follow a bunch of Foxconn PR clean-up, including raises for the workers over there. Unlike Jobs, Cook cares about humanity, it seems. But maybe that's because without Jobs' visionary quality, he has to.