Does Making iPhones Really Drive People To Suicide?

The short answer is ‘No.’

All iPhones, iPads, and iPods are made in China at factories owned by Foxconn Corp. Foxconn is a Taiwanese-based company with factories all over the world. In China, Foxconn employs 1,000,000 people, making them the biggest private employer in the country. Foxconn makes products for many other companies besides Apple. Kindles, PlayStations, and Wiis are also made in China by Foxconn.

foxconnYou may have heard stories that working conditions at Foxconn factories are so stressful that the employees are driven to suicide. Photos of suicide nets around Foxconn factories regularly appear in newspapers and magazines around the world. And indeed, there have been suicides. In 2010, 18 Foxconn employees committed suicide on the job or at an employee dorm. In order to reduce the number of suicides, Foxconn now requires every employee to sign a pledge not to commit suicide on the job.

While every suicide is a tragedy for both the individual and his family, we are talking about 18 suicides a year at a company that employs 1,000,000 people. The critical question is this – is this a high or a low rate of suicide? By Chinese standards, it is a very low rate. It is important to remember that suicide rates in Asia are relatively high compared to suicide rates in the West. Here are the suicide rates per 100,000 people in various countries.

South Korea 32
Japan 23
China 22
United States 12
Germany 10
Australia 10
Great Britain 7
Italy 6

Suicide rates vary a lot within the United States. In California, the rate is 9. In Alaska and Nevada, the rate is over 20.

Foxconn employs 1,000,000 people in China; therefore, if the suicide rate for Foxconn employees was the same as the suicide rate for the population of China as a whole, you would expect the number of Foxconn employee suicides to be 220 a year; however, the known number of Foxconn employee suicides is under 20 a year. There may be other Foxconn employee suicides that we don’t know about. After all, China is not an open society with a free press. However, no one has ever produced any evidence that the suicide rate for Foxconn employees is greater than that of the general population of the country. If you have any such evidence, send it to me. I’d like to see it.