By CultureBanx Team
- Apple’s first East Coast campus will costs $1B+ in Raleigh, NC and aims to bring 3K jobs
- Raleigh’s population is 22% Black
Apple (AAPL -1.51%) has promised to add 20,000 U.S. jobs by 2026, with at least 3,000 of those jobs being in Raleigh, North Carolina. Employees will work from its first East Coast campus that Apple is dropping more than $1 billion to build. With this move to the Research Triangle Park area, will the tech behemoth finally be able to recruit more diverse talent?
Why This Matters: Apple stands to gain a lot in terms of diversity when it moves to the area, as it can potentially up its Black employee representation which currently falls at 9%. Digging deeper into the Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill demographics which make up the Research Triangle Park area where 22% of the population is Black. Those numbers nearly double the nation’s 13% Black population, and are slightly higher than North Carolina’s overall 21%. Local companies such as IBM (IBM +0.98%), Cisco (CSCO +1.25%), and Lenovo (LNVGY +2.58%), usually rake in talent from three neighboring universities: North Carolina State University, Duke University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
With affordable homes, above-average school scores, below-average crime rates and property taxes, Raleigh reigns supreme. The Research Triangle Park location gives Apple access to talent at HBCUs Shaw University and North Carolina Central University. The opportunity would align with Apple’s active efforts to attract Black tech talent through its Apple HBCU Scholars Program.
Not to mention that Raleigh is one of the cities where Black people thrive in terms of home ownership, affordability, relatively-low violence, and income. Forbes notes 41.3% of Blacks in the city are homeowners and the median Black household income sits at $49,433. However, That’s lower than the $63,238 average income in the Research Triangle Park area. The Apple development, which is expected to cost anywhere between $1.5 billion to $2 billion, could make the area even more attractive for Black professionals. Also, the average paycheck is expected to around $130,000 per year.
Situational Awareness: While Apple’s HQ remains in California, the tech giant has been planting its flag around the country. Its satellite offices in places like San Diego, with its 5% Black population, and Seattle with its 7% Black population, put it in direct competition with the likes of Amazon and chipmaker Qualcomm.
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