By: Phil Stott, Vault.com
Today is National Hiring Day. Well, at McDonald’s anyway—the fast food chain is seeking to add up to 50,000 employees at neighborhood restaurants throughout the nation.
On the surface, that sounds like great news for an economy that’s struggling to create enough jobs to speed this sluggish recovery up. According to the National Urban League, the target of 50,000 hires “means that McDonald’s and their franchisees will generate more than $1.4 billion in consumer spending at a time when the U.S. economy needs the boost and our communities need jobs more than ever.”
Forbes’ Susan Adams points out, however, that the company has said the salary budget for those 50,000 employees is just $518 million. And, while she notes that a McDonald’s executive says it’s “not fair or accurate to simply divide that by 50,000, it does break down to little more than $10,000 per worker.”
While the McDonald’s exec may be correct that it’s not an accurate measure of what salaries will look like, there’s no easier way to slice the figure. At $10 per hour, the company can hire almost 25,000 full-time workers (defined as having a 2,080 hour working year). And that’s just salary—no benefits included.
At minimum wage, the number of full time employees that budget allows rises to a little over 34,000.
It’s clear, then, that many of the McJobs* are going to be part-time. And that none is going to come with an overly generous salary. Add to that the short average tenure of an employee in the fast food industry, and you could be forgiven for arriving at the belief that this initiative is more about publicity for the house that Ronald built than it is about job creation.
Of course, the firm points out that many of its managers and franchisees—and even the occasional senior exec—started behind the counter in one of its restaurants. But the scale of the current hiring push—50,000 employees in a single day–somewhat undermines the strength of that message.
While many will jump at the opportunity to get a foot onto any kind of ladder in this economy—and the National Urban League again praises the firm here for the opportunities it offers African American teens in particular—it’s difficult to view it in a purely positive light simply because of the reputation of the type of work involved.
(Full disclosure: during my college years, I spent many long, demoralizing hours flipping burgers, tending fryers and mopping up grease in the kitchen of one of McDonalds’ competitors. For all the positive spin that McDonald’s USA President Jan Fields can offer about gaining “a solid foundation in the basics of business,” I can attest to having learned three main things: that it’s all but impossible to get that kitchen smell out of your clothes; that levels of customer politeness enjoy an inverse relationship with those of hunger; and that the happiest day of your employment is the one where you realize you don’t need to do this—or take this—anymore.)
In that light, perhaps the best way of assessing this particular piece of news would be to revisit the issue at some point in the future and find out how long the hires being made today lasted—and whether any of them have made any sort of career advancement.
