As Apple has grown its product lines (like MacBooks and iPhones) and expanded the services it offers (like cloud storage and Apple TV) over recent years and decades, it has needed to employ more and more people.
From its two founders, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, who started Apple out of a garage in 1976, the company has evolved into a global tech giant with offices and retail stores in over 20 countries, employing tens of thousands worldwide.
Here’s how many employees Apple has, how much they make, where they work, and what the CEO pay gap looks like.
How many employees does Apple have?
Apple had about 166,000 full-time employees globally at its fiscal year ending September 27, 2025, according to business data aggregator Bullfincher. That’s more than double the number of people it employed (about 60,400) in fiscal year 2011, when founder Steve Jobs served his last full year as CEO.
According to Apple’s job creation page, 80,000 employees — a little less than half of the company’s workforce — are in the U.S., with an additional 450,000 working for the company’s suppliers.
Here’s a look at the company’s employment footprint over the last decade:
Related: Where is Apple’s headquarters? A spaceship-like office with thousands of trees
What is Apple’s revenue per employee?
Apple posted $416 billion in revenue in 2025. Based on 166,000 full-time workers, the company brought in about $2.5 million per employee. By comparison, in 2011, a year before Tim Cook took over as CEO, per-employee revenue was lower, at $1.79 million (based on $108 billion in revenues and about 60,400 full-time employees).
By comparison, the revenue per employee at Nvidia—the world’s biggest company by market value—was larger, at $5.1 million in its fiscal year 2026, based on about 42,000 employees and $215.9 billion in revenue.
Who are the highest and lowest-paid Apple employees?
Apple, like other companies, uses a CEO pay ratio, which compares the CEO’s compensation to that of the median employee.
In 2025, CEO Tim Cook was the highest-paid employee at $3 million. His annual salary hadn’t changed since 2016. But his total compensation was $74.29 million, compared to the median employee compensation of $139,483. That CEO pay ratio was 533 to 1. This ratio is based on Apple’s annualized base salaries for permanent full-time and part-time employees who didn’t work the full year.
By comparison, Nvidia’s ratio was smaller, at 166 to 1, due to employing fewer workers than Apple and paying a higher median salary. CEO Jensen Huang‘s total compensation in Nvidia’s fiscal year 2025 was $49.86 million, versus $301,233 for the median employee.
Which Apple department has the most employees?
Apple doesn’t provide this information publicly. According to Unify GTM, which compiles data using artificial intelligence, the bulk of Apple’s workforce is in engineering.
Based on 120,485 Apple employees (which would be equivalent to about its headcount of about 123,000 full-time employees in 2017), 41% were in engineering, followed by business management (15%), sales and support (9%), marketing and product (7%), operations (7%), finance and administration (6%), information technology (4%), consulting (3%), other (5%), and a remaining 3% that Unify didn’t identify.
By comparison, in 2026, Nvidia had 42,000 employees across 38 countries, of which 31,000 were involved in research and development and 11,000 in sales, marketing, operations, and administrative positions.
More on Apple:
- Tim Cook’s net worth: The Apple CEO’s stock & wealth in 2025
- Steve Wozniak’s net worth: The Apple cofounder’s wealth in 2025
- Steve Jobs’ net worth: How rich Apple’s founder could have been
Apple’s workforce dynamics are likely to change in the years to come. In 2025, the tech giant announced plans to invest $600 billion in the U.S. over a four-year period, aiming to bring some of its supply chain and advanced manufacturing back home through an initiative dubbed the American Manufacturing Program (AMP).
Apple said that in four years, it planned to directly hire 20,000 people in the U.S. — of which the majority would be focused on research and development, silicon engineering, software development, and AI and machine learning.
Where do most of Apple’s employees work?
Apple’s largest concentration of workers is at its Apple Park headquarters in Cupertino, California, which houses more than 12,000 employees across many of the company’s divisions, including research and development. Still, Apple has more than 500 retail stores globally, which collectively employ thousands of workers.
