With all of the bad press Wal-mart has been receiving recently (see Robert Greenwald's newest documentary, "The High Cost of Low Price"), you'd think they would be able to come out with a better PR campaign then the faulty notion that they actually create jobs.
As Krugman points out in his column today:
The assertion that Wal-Mart "creates 100,000 jobs a year" is now the core of the company's public relations strategy. It's true, of course, that the company is getting bigger every year. But adding 100,000 people to Wal-Mart's work force doesn't mean adding 100,000 jobs to the economy. On the contrary, there's every reason to believe that as Wal-Mart expands, it destroys at least as many jobs as it creates, and drives down workers' wages in the process.
Furthermore, Dr. David Neumark, an economist at the Public Policy Institute of California (at UC Irvine), released the results of a new study on November 4, 2005, entitled, "The Economic Impact of Wal-Mart."
His study examined Wal-Martís effect on employment and earnings, and concluded that ìResidents of a local labor market do indeed earn less following the opening of Wal-Mart stores.î From Neumarkís paper:
On balance, the evidence is more consistent with the claims of Wal-Martís critics, although questions remain. In the retail sector, the representative Wal-Mart presence (about eight years) reduces employment by two to four percent. There is some evidence that payrolls per worker also decline, by about 3.5 percent, but this conclusion is less robust. Either way, though, retail earnings fall.
He was made "Person of the Week" back in November at Wal-Mart Watch.
As we've always stated, we vote every day with our wallets, and after you watch "The High Cost of Low Price," shopping at Wal-Mart will become that much more difficult.
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