Apple has released figures demonstrating its contributions to the American labour market, in an apparent attempt to counter growing criticism about its overseas labour policies.

The company only directly employs 47,000 people in the US, 27,350 of those at its 246 retail stores (over 100 per store on average).

However, based on independent figures, well over ten times that number are employed as a result of Apple’s operations, from its engineering and supply chain to the iOS ‘app economy’, the company says in a new page on its website.

All up, Apple says 304,000 people are employed developing, manufacturing, selling and shipping Apple products, and another 210,000 people are employed developing apps for the app store.

7000 construction jobs will be created when work begins on Apple’s new ‘spaceship campus’, the company adds.

Apple has come under fire lately for outsourcing much of its manufacturing to overseas factories with questionable labour conditions.

The new numbers sound impressive at first, but for a country with well over 300 million people 500,000 is actually not that many, especially when you know you’re even counting the Fed Ex and UPS employees who deliver the devices.

The fact is, though, that as long as Apple has almost US$100 billion in cash reserves, there’s always going to be more they could do to help their local economy.

Note: Apple has posted 11 job notices for engineering positions related to iCloud, Apple Insider has pointed out. The roles include two iCloud software engineers, three iCloud senior software engineers, plus special iCloud engineers working with C/C++ and Java. Take a look at the roles here.