I agree with the scale issues but with double digit unemployment I think we could find them however, we still lack the right kind of education ....
Another critical advantage for Apple was that China provided engineers at a scale the United States could not match. Apple?s executives had estimated that about 8,700 industrial engineers were needed to oversee and guide the 200,000 assembly-line workers eventually involved in manufacturing iPhones. The company?s analysts had forecast it would take as long as nine months to find that many qualifiekd engineers in the United States.
In China, it took 15 days.
Companies like Apple ?say the challenge in setting up U.S. plants is finding a technical work force,? said Martin Schmidt, associate provost at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In particular, companies say they need engineers with more than high school, but not necessarily a bachelor?s degree. Americans at that skill level are hard to find, executives contend. ?They?re good jobs, but the country doesn?t have enough to feed the demand,? Mr. Schmidt said.