Apple to build new Austin hub, expand in other tech hotbeds

AUSTIN, Texas — Apple plans to build a $1 billion campus in Austin, Texas, that will create at least 5,000 jobs ranging from engineers to call-center agents while adding more luster to a Southwestern city that has already become a bustling tech hub. Many high-tech workers are thus choosing to live elsewhere, causing major tech employers such as Apple, Amazon and Google to look in new places for the employees they need to pursue their future ambitions. The government incentives offered to Apple seem “more in the line of normal business site selection” compared with Amazon’s public “shakedown,” said Mark Muro, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Center. The new Austin campus, with about 3 million square feet of office space, will be about a mile from another large office that Apple opened five years ago. Greg Abbott hailed Apple’s new campus as a milestone development that “truly elevates Austin as one of the premier technology hubs in the entire world.” ___ This story has been corrected to reflect that Apple’s new campus is expected to span 3 million square feet instead of 5,000 square feet and correct the spelling of the first name of Indeed’s chief economist to Jed instead of Jeb as stated in an earlier version.