Walmart WMT,
has joined a growing list of retailers who have raised employee wages to $ 15 an hour, but unlike rivals like Target TGT,
Amazon AMZN,
and Costco COST,
all of which now offer a base salary of $ 15 an hour for all employees, the country’s largest private employer will maintain its starting salary at $ 11 an hour.
The wage increase at Walmart means that about 730,000 hourly workers will receive at least $ 15 an hour as soon as the change goes into effect, said Doug McMillon, CEO of Walmart, on Thursday. This is equivalent to half the company’s hourly workforce.
“I’ve been working at Walmart for 11 years and make just $ 11.85, and most of us, cashiers and hundreds of thousands of others, were left out of the increases Walmart is giving,” said Mendy Hughes, a Walmart cashier in a statement released after Walmart announced the salary increase. Hughes is a leader of United for Respect, who describes himself as a national non-profit organization that is not a union. The group says it ran a successful campaign for Walmart to raise its starting salary to $ 11 an hour in 2018.
“Being a cashier in the COVID-19 pandemic is one of the most dangerous jobs out there,” she added. “Why is it so difficult for America’s wealthiest family to simply do what it should have done years ago and raise the base salary for all Walmart associates to $ 15 / hour?”
The 730,000 hourly workers at Walmart who will continue to earn less than $ 15 an hour are hardly alone.
On networks like Home Depot HD,
Dollar Tree DLTR,
CMG Chipotle,
Burger King QSR,
Kroger KR,
McDonald’s MCD,
and Chick-fil-A, boxes that earn less than $ 12 an hour, according to Glassdoor, a website that collects anonymous information on salaries for current and former employees.
See too: What minimum wage increases have done for McDonald’s restaurants – and their employees
“At Chipotle, we pay our hourly workers above the federal minimum, and in some jurisdictions, employees are already paid $ 15 an hour,” said Laurie Schalow, Chipotle’s director of corporate affairs.
Among these chains, Burger King and Dollar Tree tellers earn the lowest, with average hourly wages of $ 9.
McDonald’s, Chick-fil-A and Burger King have many franchise locations across the country where franchise owners set employee salaries, rather than the companies themselves.
Dollar Tree, Burger King and Kroger did not respond to MarketWatch’s request for comment.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated that nearly 400,000 workers per hour in the U.S. earned exactly the current federal minimum wage of $ 7.25 per hour in 2019. Another 1.2 million workers earned below the minimum wage that year, regardless of gratuities, commissions and overtime pay, the BLS reported.
President Joe Biden and Democratic lawmakers are pushing to raise the federal minimum wage to $ 15 an hour and eliminate the included minimum wage by June 2025.
As a result, about 17 million workers would see their wages increased, according to a report published earlier this month by the Congressional Budget Office, a non-partisan federal agency.
The downside, however, is that 1.4 million workers may become unemployed as a result, according to the CBO average estimate. About 900,000 Americans would no longer be living below poverty levels if a minimum wage of $ 15 an hour was enacted, estimated the CBO.
Biden contested the CBO report during a municipal assembly Tuesday night, broadcast on CNN.
“There is also, if not more, evidence to dictate that it would make the economy grow and, in the long and medium term, benefit both small and large companies, and it would not have such a dilatory effect,” he said.
“But this is a debatable issue.”