Apple has updated a Newsroom post today with the latest details on how it is growing US jobs. Specifically, the company purchased components from over 9,000 American vendors in 2018 and says it supported almost half a million domestic jobs.

The newsroom post from Apple highlights the Advanced Manufacturing Fund that was started last year.

Just over a year ago, component manufacturer Finisar was awarded $390 million from Apple’s Advanced Manufacturing Fund. To expand production of a critical part of the TrueDepth camera system, introduced with iPhone X, Finisar turned an unoccupied building in Sherman, Texas into a bustling operation full of people who will supply that future business.

The post also details some of the American employees that the initiative has impacted, like Johnny Jackson.

“You take an old guy like me that’s been doing one job for 27 years, and now I’m learning something new every day,” says Jackson. “The training here is tremendous — you’ll be good because you’ve been trained by people who are good.”

As for the US vendors Apple worked with last year, it spent $60B with 9,000 companies and supported 450,000 American jobs.

In 2018 alone, Apple spent $60 billion with 9,000 American component suppliers and companies, an increase of more than 10 percent from the year before, supporting more than 450,000 jobs.

Apple also notes that the US jobs that it has “created and supported” have more that tripled in the last seven years.

Since 2011, the total number of jobs created and supported by Apple in the United States has more than tripled — from almost 600,000 to 2 million across all 50 states.

Another individual highlight is of an Army veteran who works at Finisar and also mentors high school students about advanced manufacturing.

Army veteran Michael Turner, 40, started as a process technician at Finisar’s Sherman facility in June. A father of two and grandfather of one, Turner is also a mentor for the AMP Program, an effort by local manufacturers to teach high school students about advanced manufacturing jobs and encourage them to explore future careers in the field.

Other American vendors include Kentucky’s Corning who makes produces the display glass for iPhone and iPad, Cincinnati Test Systems who tests device water resistance, and Broadcom out of Colorado who makes wireless communication hardware.

The touch sensitive glass for iPhone and iPad is made by Corning at a 65-year-old facility in Harrodsburg, Kentucky. Cincinnati Test Systems in Ohio designed a first-of-its-kind equipment to ensure iPhone is water resistant. And Broadcom in Fort Collins, Colorado, Qorvo in Hillsboro, Oregon and Skyworks in Woburn, Massachusetts, are all making wireless communication hardware that enables global connectivity.

The update to this Newsroom post comes after a NYT piece this morning that says Apple had to delay the launch of the Mac Pro in 2013 because of a lack of American screw vendors. Apple allegedly searched “for months” for a domestic company who could keep up with their needs before resorting to a Chinese vendor for the screws.

Check out the full Newsroom post on Apple’s growing contributions to the US economy here.

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