Stunning Numbers: Wal-Mart Jobs Even Worse Than You Think
And, yes, I realize you thought they were pretty bad already. Via Jonathan Tasini, I came upon a new study by the Wal-Mart Alliance for Reform Now and the Wal-Mart Workers Association. They used public records laws to study employee quarterly earning at Wal-Marts in Florida for the first quarter of 2005. Here is some of what they found:
$6.35 Hourly wage of a typical…Wal-Mart worker, if that worker was employed 40 hours per week for the entire quarter.
Of course, Wal-Mart defines workers with as few as 34 hours/week as full time.
60% Percentage of Wal-Mart workers whose positions pay (or would have paid) $16,000 or less per year.
The use of the conditional in the parentheses there is because of Wal-Mart’s turnover rate.
75% Annualized quarterly (worker) turnover rate at Wal-Mart in Florida.
I’ll quote the same conclusion as Tasini because it sums these figures up so well:
Even under the most conservative assumptions, it is inescapable that the bulk of Wal- Mart positions pay extremely low wages and/or are part-time. Furthermore, the effective pay rates for Wal-Mart workers are significantly lower than the figures the company has repeatedly touted publicly.
Constant turnover is the norm for Wal-Mart’s workforce. At current rates, as many as 3 out of 4 workers who began or will begin work with the company at some point during 2005 will no longer be with the company as of the beginning of 2006.
The combined effect of low wages, dependence on part-time workers and continuous turnover is that the typical Wal-Mart worker is either a recent hire and/or earns a poverty-level wage.
Turnover costs the company an astronomical amount of money (minimally $150 million in Florida in 2005). Reinvestment of this money in wages would promote retention and significantly raise the income of thousands of Wal-Mart workers earning at or below the poverty level.
Gee, do you think Costco’s management might actually be onto something?
It would be interesting to know what percentage of new Walmart employees also work elsewhere at the same time.
In other words, do they expect that Walmart will be essentially a part-time or supplemental job? By now many people who would apply must have some knowledge of the pay rates and turnover rates before they apply.
[...] were at any given time. They never mention the number of under-employed. Over on our Wal-Mart blog, I often stress that Wal-Mart defines someone who works as few as 34 hours/week is considered full time by that [...]