Apple Inc.plans to boost its employee count by 46 per cent to 23,400 in its hometown of Cupertino, California, paying out US$2.9 billion in annual wages by the time a massive new headquarters is completed in 2016.

The maker of iPhones and iPads estimates that Cupertino workers’ base salaries will rise by about the same percentage, from US$2 billion last year. The data was included in an 82-page report commissioned by Apple on the economic impact of the project, called Campus 2.

The plan, one of co-founder Steve Jobs’s last projects before his death in 2011, calls for a donut-shaped, 2.8 million square-foot main building that’s two-thirds the size of the Pentagon, featuring curved 40-foot exterior walls made of concave glass from Germany. Apple would add 6,000 trees and hide almost all the roads and parking spaces underground.

The campus will also generate 9,200 construction jobs and US$38.1 million in one-time construction taxes and fees for the city, according to the report. Taxes paid by Apple generated 18 per cent of Cupertino’s general fund in 2012, according to the report, which was prepared by consulting firm Keyser Marston Associates Inc.

BLOOMBERG