Bob Collins
Fifty-thousand people will get jobs in one day later this month.
The jobs will be at McDonald’s, which announced today that it will hire the workers on April 19.
On the surface, it’s quite a numbers story in the company news release:
* McDonald’s and its franchisees will spend more than $518 million more in wages and salaries in the coming year, an average of more than $1.4 million every day.
* More than $41.5 million in training will be invested in the company’s new workforce – instilling life-long business and customer service skills as well as setting employees up for success in current and future opportunities.
* The addition of 50,000 potential hires translates into $54 million more in payroll taxes contributed to the broader economy.
* Using a statistical multiplier effect, 50,000 new workers will generate almost $1.4 billion in annual spending – more than $3.5 million per day.
$1.4 billion works out to $28,000 per year.
The angle that the McDonald’s president is pushing is this one:
..the average pay for the new positions will be $8.30 per hour, higher than the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour.
The natural conclusion is that McDonald’s is paying more than minimum wage to its people, the bulk of whom are the customer service people and cooks. But the figure includes the restaurant managers who will also be hired and, according to McDonald’s, they can make up to $50,000 a year.
The company doesn’t say how many of the 50,000 jobs are managers.
Are 50,000 fast-food jobs a sign of a recovering economy, or a sign that it’s not recovering very fast?
The company’s national hiring day mirrors one it had on the West Coast last summer.
“It’s hard to be choosy right now,” Serena DiPiero, 48, of Sacramento, told the Sacramento Bee at the time.
