How the McEconomy Bombed the American Worker: The Hollowing Out of the Middle Class

[marmar]

from TomDispatch:




How the McEconomy Bombed the American Worker
The Hollowing Out of the Middle Class

By Andy Kroll


Think of it as a parable for these grim economic times. On April 19th, McDonald's launched its first-ever national hiring day, signing up 62,000 new workers at stores throughout the country. For some context, that's more jobs created by one company in a single day than the net job creation of the entire U.S. economy in 2009. And if that boggles the mind, consider how many workers applied to local McDonald's franchises that day and left empty-handed: 938,000 of them. With a 6.2% acceptance rate in its spring hiring blitz, McDonald’s was more selective than the Princeton, Stanford, or Yale University admission offices.

It shouldn’t be surprising that a million souls flocked to McDonald's hoping for a steady paycheck, when nearly 14 million Americans are out of work and nearly a million more are too discouraged even to look for a job. At this point, it apparently made no difference to them that the fast-food industry pays some of the lowest wages around: on average, $8.89 an hour, or barely half the $15.95 hourly average across all American industries.

On an annual basis, the average fast-food worker takes home $20,800, less than half the national average of $43,400. McDonald's appears to pay even worse, at least with its newest hires. In the press release for its national hiring day, the multi-billion-dollar company said it would spend $518 million on the newest round of hires, or $8,354 a head. Hence the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of "McJob" as "a low-paying job that requires little skill and provides little opportunity for advancement."

Of course, if you read only the headlines, you might think that the jobs picture was improving. The economy added 1.3 million private-sector jobs between February 2010 and January 2011, and the headline unemployment rate edged downward, from 9.8% to 8.8%, between November of last year and March. It inched upward in April, to 9%, but tempering that increase was the news that the economy added 244,000 jobs last month (not including those 62,000 McJobs), beating economists' expectations. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175389/tomgram%3A_andy_kroll%2C_welcome_to_the_mcjobs_recovery/#more (story follows a brief intro titled 'Welcome to the McJobs Recovery')

[QED]

1. I wonder what those 244,000 jobs are

and the salaries. Do they pay a living wage or are they minimum wage jobs? Part time? Do they have benefits?

[jtuck004]

You can look at the tables in the Employment Situation Report

of the BLS, but the largest numbers were in the categories of home health aide, hotel service, people who bring you those little drinks with the umbrellas, etc.

Most of those are minimum wage at best, and insurance is often not available. Sometimes they are offered a cheap group policy that offers little to no care.

[jtuck004]

3. Dupe

[dkf]

2. Irony is that is the "good" job Americans are willing to take.

Consider the ones beneath our standards, the people that harvested and processed all the food that the McJobs serve up. I wonder if they get paid half of a McJob and how their benefits compare to a McJob.

Yet this allows the homeless person to get by on the dollar menu.

[progressoid]

4. k/r

[Scout]

5. well then just get out there and get 5 McJobs, you lazy fool! n/t