

McDonalds promoted mass employment. Very few locations actually hired. - RobIsIT
http://theloop21.com/money/supersize-economy

======
jswinghammer
One thing that I've noticed about McDonald's is the sort of people who work
there in cities versus the country. I grew up in the country and McDonald's
was a place for kids to work. In the city it's a place where adults work. I
suppose given the choice I'd rather hire adults but I'm not sure how an adult
supports themselves in a city like Boston on what they pay.

~~~
zeemonkee
Could be they work at MacDonalds to supplement their major source of income
(pension, working partner etc).

~~~
jswinghammer
From my limited observation it seems like that might be possible. Many of
their workers seem to be Haitian or Chinese immigrants. I don't really go
there for anything but the occasional strawberry shake so my sample size is
pretty small.

------
smackfu
50,000 jobs sounds like a lot until you realize there are over 13,000
McDonalds in the U.S. And he had a sample size of four?

~~~
klbarry
4 per location is still a lot of hirings. Not to mention if each of the 50,000
cost $10,000 yearly in salary, the cost to McDonalds is 500 mil.

~~~
smackfu
You are assuming they are all new positions, when we know that fast food has
extremely high turnover. Just putting in a two-week hiring freeze in advance
of the date would probably generate a huge number of open jobs.

------
icefox
While it read very negative the end sums it up in a much better light:

"In some cases, McDonald’s franchises may have taken the opportunity to truly
hire new employees. But, for the most part it was for show. Even the second
largest commercial employer in America can’t solve our recessionary woes, but
it’s nice to know that at least somewhere along the line they made an
attempt."

------
steevdave
I agree with the author that the stigma is that you only work at McDonalds if
you are a loser. At least in major cities. I grew up in the country as well
and perhaps the teachings are a tad different there. I was taught that any
income is better than no income. And McDonalds is some income. Now all you see
are a bunch of people attempting to become the next Facebook, google or Color.
Too many people think that if they work at McDonalds or any other fast food
joint that they are stuck there instead of realizing that they are actually
contributing more than just slaving away.

------
michaelochurch
Americans really, really don't understand what poverty is, why it exists, and
how it works. Nor do they comprehend why it must be fought and how hard it is
to fight. This is because most Americans haven't been face-to-face with actual
poverty in 50 years and now that it's creeping up on them in the less
fortunate reaches of the country, they don't know what is going on.

The stores in these towns are dying because people don't have money to spend
in them, and because the stores are dying, people have even less money and
more stores have to close. It's a self-accelerating process. Even McDonald's
is not immune: it's still unaffordable for the truly poor, so as people slide,
its revenues are going to decline like everything else. Conservatives believe
poverty is a "moral medicine" that toughens up the good and kills off the
weak. Wrong. It's a cancer.

For a more ground-level analysis of this, what actually happens during
corporate-chain hiring drives is that the individual stores have tight
seatbelts and the budgets often don't increase. The corporate office may
decide to have a "hiring drive" but it doesn't increase the stores' budgets.
The goal of the "hiring drive" is not to increase staffing but to take in new
people and fire some, or to ensure that workers who are currently getting
overtime no longer do. (Workers in low-paid hourly positions often love
overtime, but managers don't like having to pay it out.) Thus, hiring new
people means that those are there have to take hours cuts or get laid off.
Generally, managers would rather keep the people they have than hire someone
new and have to cut other peoples' hours, hurting morale across the board. So
the incentive structure in such hiring drives is such that very little actual
hiring will take place. Serious hiring only happens if (a) the budget
increases, or (b) people are working overtime and corporate comes down on the
store manager for paying out too much time-and-a-half.

~~~
jswinghammer
Well it's likely that Americans will experience such poverty again given the
course things seem to be heading on.

~~~
michaelochurch
It's possible. A lot of bad ideas that seemed to die in the mid-20th century
and were supposed to turn to ash by 2000 instead came back with a vengeance in
1973-Present in forms such as "trickle down economics" and neoconservatism.

The Reaganites were incredibly naive and short-sighted, being too young to
remember the Great Depression. So they thought the egalitarian and regulatory
seatbelts of the 1940-1975 era were horrible encumbrances. They had no idea,
in the 1980s, what they would set in motion. The smarter ones left the
conservative bandwagon before the disastrous presidency of Bush II, but by
this point the Juggernaut (5/3, cannot be blocked by walls) was in motion.

------
shareme
IN the US we have something called the FTC truth-in-advertising act I wonder
how fast some Lawyer volunteers to do a class action suit against McDonalds
for false advertising?

~~~
jswinghammer
There can be any number of reasons why people didn't get jobs. Not sure you
can sue them for failing to hire a large group of people.

