Wal-Mart Swamped With Job Seekers

• January 26, 2006

Whoa…

(Crain’s) — The new Wal-Mart Stores Inc. location opening Friday in suburban Evergreen Park received a record 25,000 applications for 325 positions, the highest for any one location in the retailer’s history, a company official says.
Despite the fact the company says these numbers underscore demand for Wal—Mart jobs in the community, critics wonder how many of these positions are lower—paying part—time work.
The only other site that’s come close to the number of applications is a store in Oakland, California that received 11,000 applications for about the same number of positions last year.
Wal-Mart’s Chicago-area manager Chad Donath said generally stores receive between 3,000 and 4,000 applications for about 300 to 450 positions. He says Wal-Mart has been participating in job fairs and advertising the positions as it does in other communities but this time “we got an amazing response.”

Twentyfive thousand applicants. Clearly, some people value Wal-Mart jobs despite the opinions of some critics. And I have to wonder about the criticism expressed in the article. Even if the 325 positions really are low-paying or part-time positions, where do you think those 325 people were working before? I’m guessing that they all didn’t leave better jobs to go to work at Wal-Mart. Most of them probably had lower paying jobs. Or maybe even no jobs at all.
The point is, I can hardly see the point in criticizing a store that just brought hundreds of new jobs to a community where at least 25,000 people (and probably more) need work, low-paying, part-time job or not.
I have also heard, from someone in a position to know, that Wal-Mart will soon be announcing that they’ve added over 20,000 new jobs to the U.S. During a time when companies like Ford and GMC are laying off tens of thousands of workers at a time – mostly due to the fact that they can no longer afford to pay for the health benefits these employees require – Wal-Mart is adding jobs.
Kinda makes you think that Wal-Mart should keep rejecting all those union demands for higher wages and more benefits.

Tags: Politics

http://www.ski-blog.com/ Justin B

Consider that Walmart promotes heavily from within and is the single largest corporation in the world. Add to that the fact that Walmart is growing like crazy into new markets and it seems that while there may be a large number of entry level positions that don’t pay real great, there is an increasing number of management positions that come with constant growth of the company.

I have never heard the lefties complaining about how Walmart treats their management team. Seems that clerks and entry level workers are a commodity in large supply (over 25k applications at this store alone) and that people are willing to change jobs from wherever they currently work just for the opportunity to work at Walmart and maybe someday advance.

Maryland is targetting the largest employer in their state based on misleading statistics and a concerted campaign by the Left to attack all American corporations, not just Walmart. This article demonstrates one piece of the puzzle of why Walmart pays the wages they do and has the lowest prices–they can. Supply and demand. There is a huge supply of workers willing to work for the wages they pay and an even larger supply of consumers who want low prices. Like it or not, people vote with their feet, their paychecks, and their buying habits. And Walmart is winning.
http://www.thatedeguy.com/ Shane Ede

The hell with where were those 325 people working that they want to work at wal-mart, where were those 25,000 people working that they want to work at walmart. Seriously though, walmart jobs are some of the better part-time jobs. Especially in our neck of the woods. Try and find a job slingin hamburgers that pays much more than $6 an hour…
http://sayanythingblog.com/2006/02/08/wal-mart-to-open-1500-new-stores/ Say Anything – North Dakota&#8

&heellip; I have no idea how many people the average Wal-Mart store employs, but a recently-built store outside of Chicago just hired 325 people.Â If we use that total for our average 1,500 new Wal-Mart stores will mean 487,500 new jobs for our economy.Â Relatively low-paying jobs in most instances to be sure, but given that the Chicago store I just mentioned had 25,000 applications for the 325 jobs available I think we can safely assume that there are plenty of people in this country who want them. &heellip;

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