The vast majority of Apple products are made in China. But why?
Because labor there is cheaper than in most other countries — or so the common logic goes.
But in a wide-ranging interview on "60 Minutes," Apple CEO Tim Cook asserted that was not the case.
"It's skill," Cook told Charlie Rose in a segment that aired Sunday evening.
Rose countered by asking whether Chinese workers were more skilled than American or German workers.
"Let me be clear," Cook said. "China put an enormous focus on manufacturing, in what you and I would call vocational kind of skills. The US over time began to stop having as many vocational kind of skills. I mean you could take every tool and die maker in the United States and probably put them in the room that we're currently sitting in. In China you would have to have multiple football fields."
Tool and die makers build and operate tools used in manufacturing. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that there were about 75,950 tool and die makers in the US in May 2014.
According to the "60 Minutes" report, about 1 million people in China — many of them working for the huge Apple contractor Foxconn — make most Apple products.
Rose asked Cook whether China was ahead of the US in manufacturing because of education in China.
"Because it was a focus of them," Cook said. "It was a focus of their educational system. That is the reality."
Check out the clip from "60 Minutes" below and watch the entire report here. Cook and Rose begin to discuss manufacturing Apple products about 5 minutes 15 seconds in.
