Since founded in 1962 Walmart has been one of the largest corporations in the world employing more than 2 million people today. On September 2 Walmart announced “Walmart is raising the pay for more than 565,000 store employees. This is helping support what many people have been asking for with raising the minimum wage. “The investment means that over the past year, we’ve raised pay for approximately 1.2 million hourly associates in our U.S. stores, increasing our U.S. average hourly wage to $16.40.” Walmart has seen few repercussions because of this decision because most people are in favor of increasing the minimum wage... Walmart has had cost inflation because of this, but during this pandemic time what company has not increased their prices?
One more thing that Walmart announced is that like Starbucks “Walmart announced in July it will pay for college tuition and books for its part-time and full-time associates at a group of schools.” This is very important because the number one reason people do not go to college is due to how expensive college is. College is very beneficial, even if you think you are not learning a lot, getting a degree from a college is a good signal for companies to hire you. Statistically speaking a person with a bachelor's degree will make more money than a high school graduate and an associate's degree, and have a lower chance of being unemployed. People may not like being in college but from a wealth standpoint, it helps. With Walmart helping pay for college this opens the doorway for some people to change their lives and get a degree they might have not been able to get before which is far more valuable than a small raise. Other benefits of attending college include you are more likely to volunteer or donate to charity. Walmart is not just raising people’s current economic status by increasing minimum wage, but also putting them on a future path for upward mobility.
4 comments:
It is good that Walmart is increasing the pay of their workers but what does this do to other businesses who are having trouble staffing at this time. If Walmart is paying higher than minimum wage, why work somewhere else to earn minimum wage. This could potentially have a positive affect on Walmart, but a negative one on the economy in my opinion.
I agree with you, Luke, that it is a good idea that Walmart is beginning to pay for college tuition like Starbucks. I know several people who have taken advantage of Starbucks' program. It is a beneficial program for both the company and the employees. The company knows that they will have an employee for the long-run and this can improve their output because they know that they will have this employee for a long duration of time while they finish their degree. Thus, they will not be utilizing their resources, for example the amount of time management spends interviewing versus not having to interview, in an inefficient way. They can focus their time and efforts on other projects that are deemed necessary to the company. They improve their longevity of employment and their turnover rate. Additionally, it is beneficial for the employee as they will be working and also getting a degree where they can continue to contribute to economic production and GDP. It seems like this program is advantageous for al parties.
Yea Luke, I saw that news about Walmart paying college tuition for it's employees. I looked on Walmart's website and checked on their LBU Program which is what the students have to go go through to receive aid. Walmart has not partnered with too many institutions but offers a broad number of degrees to receive the aid. I just wonder how many employees will join the program (currently 8,000 out of 52,000 participants have graduated from the program). I am also interested how long people have to be employed by Walmart in order to graduate from the program. College students normally favor to gets internships instead of working at Walmart. Will the incentive of free college employ more people at Walmart?
https://corporate.walmart.com/media-library/document/live-better-u-fact-sheet-july-2021/_proxyDocument?id=0000017a-e56b-d458-ab7f-f7ebc2ee0000
When I think about stores, Walmart is one of the first stores that comes to my mind. This is a huge
business model with outstanding logistics all over the country. Besides providing low prices, it also
employs 1.5 million Americans. I am happy to hear that Walmart is willing to pay for their workers’
tuitions. It means that Walmart cares about their employees. However, if they increase their minimum
wage, it would lead to fewer workers and other monetary effects.
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