McDonalds’ Spring Hiring Spree

Introducing the latest weapon in the fight against unemployment: McDonalds? The fast food giant announced that it will be hiring as many as 50,000 new employees on a single day, Tuesday April 19. This will increase their U.S. work force by about 7.7%, bringing the number up to 700,000 employees. Essentially, McDonalds plans to do all of its hiring for the spring in one swoop, from restaurant crew to store managers. This is where an effective talent management strategy comes in.

For years, McDonalds has tried to stem the use of the word “McJob,” and this may be their latest attempt to accomplish that. McJob is a term used to describe a low-paying, “dead-end” job with little-to-no benefits, the name coming from the common belief that this is what a job at McDonalds entails. McDonald’s spokeswoman Ashley Yingling contested this, making a statement that many of the company’s top executives began in much lower positions and worked their way up the company ranks. An Illinois-based installment choose to embrace the term McJob, referring to it as a job “with career growth and endless possibilities.”

Still, this announcement has been met with a great deal of controversy. First, there’s the fact that this quantity of hiring within a short period isn’t new to McDonalds. In fact, McDonalds hires roughly the same number of people every summer. However, Yingling points out that they have yet to do it all within a single day and that “the goal of hiring 50,000 people in one day across the U.S. is unique.”

More important, however, is the issue of the wages. The average restaurant worker in McDonalds makes slightly over $8 an hour, putting them above the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. However, working 40 hours a week with no time off, $8 an hour comes out to just $16,640 a year, compared to a federal poverty cut-off point of $10,890. Furthermore, the $320 a week that will be made at that wage is barely any more than the $300 a week maximum amount someone receives from unemployment benefits, bringing into question whether a job in McDonalds is ultimately worth it.

Still, the prospect of hiring 50,000 new employees does seem to offer some relief with the staggering amount of unemployment present today. And regardless of whether or not it affects someone’s income significantly, many people would be happy just to get back to work. Whether or not McDonalds sets some sort of precedent for other large businesses to follow or has any long-term impact on the economy is yet to be seen.