APPLE AND THE NUMBERS

APPLE is pretty good at avoiding taxes, as the NYT pointed out:

As it stands, the company paid cash taxes of $3.3 billion around the world on its reported profits of $34.2 billion last year, a tax rate of 9.8 percent.

This article stirred up a lot of people so APPLE decided to send the Times a reply that avoided the issue. Here's the first sentence:

Over the past several years, we have created an incredible number of jobs in the United States. The vast majority of our global work force remains in the U.S., with more than 47,000 full-time employees in all 50 states. By focusing on innovation, we’ve created entirely new products and industries, and more than 500,000 jobs for U.S. workers — from the people who create components for our products to the people who deliver them to our customers.

I would like to know exactly how many Americans APPLE hired and the calculations behind the 500,000 figure.