McDonald’s’ business is booming. So much so that the corporation is saying “Supersize this!” and plans to hire some 50,000 new employees later this month, MSNBC reports:
Fast-food chain McDonald’s said Monday that it plans to hire as many as 50,000 additional employees in the United States later this month, citing improvements in its domestic business in recent months.
McDonald’s will hold its first national hiring day at its restaurants and via its website on April 19 to fill the openings at its restaurants across the U.S.
The new hires would increase the size of the hamburger chain’s U.S. workforce by 7 percent to 700,000 in all, and range from restaurant workers to senior managers.
McDonald’s said its franchisees would be spending an extra $518 million on wages and salaries on those new employees.
McDonald’s operates some 14,000 U.S. restaurants, 90 percent of which are run by franchisees.
The fast food retailer says it is making a concerted effort to add staff as its business improves and as more of its restaurants stay open 24 hours a day.
The company’s hiring goal translates to between three and four new hires per restaurant.
That’s a good chunk of jobs. The MSNBC reports that turnover at McD’s (of employees, that is…not of burgers) has been slow due to the economy. And with the economy still ailing it’s hoping that it can attract new employees easily. Indeed: some young people who that find their degrees from a regular university are not resulting in jobs may look more favorably now on a degree from Hamburger University (at least in the short term).
Meanwhile, it’ll be interesting to see what it’s competitors do.
ONE SUGGESTION FOR McDONALD’S: As someone who travels extensively, I am a huge Starbucks fan since I can sit there for a long time and drink coffee and go online. McDonald’s does have wifi. But in most stores there are no powe outlets. Another BIG potential problem: one store had a sign saying “no loitering” after an hour. So McD’s (that store at least) puts a limit on how long someone can sit there and drink coffee and its stores don’t have power outlets for computers. This makes Starbucks the preferred location…for the coffee…the outlets…and the fact they don’t have signs about “loitering” if you dare sit there for an hour drinking coffee or juice.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.