Evoking memories of the Great Depression, the spectre of thousands of people applying for a few jobs has returned to the USA.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer reports that over 6000 people turned up at a new Wal-Mart branch in Cleveland’s Steelyard Commons, with only 300 jobs on offer.
Mia Masten, Wal-Mart’s director of corporate affairs, Midwest division, went on to tell the Plain Dealer that in Chicago recently, 25,000 and 15,000 people applied for a few hundred jobs at two Wal-Mart stores there!
Wal-Mart isn’t exactly the kind of place people willingly seek jobs if there’s somewhere better to work. Amy Hanauer, executive director of Policy Matters Ohio, a policy research organisation based in Cleveland, said these ratios are reminiscent of bread lines in times of great poverty. “That’s Depression-era kind of imagery,” she told the Plain Dealer.
“You can’t have an economy that works that way,” Hanauer said. “It speaks to the need to generate a different kind of employment in Cleveland.” She noted that Ohio has a legacy of manufacturing. “The question is, how can we reinvigorate that?”