Wal-Mart draws huge crowd - of applicants
Monday, November 26, 2007 - Zachary Lewis -Plain Dealer Reporter
As the world's largest private employer, Wal-Mart is used to being greeted by large numbers of applicants almost every time it opens a new store.
But the 6,000-plus people who applied for jobs at the new Supercenter in Cleveland's Steelyard Commons took everyone, even Wal-Mart, by surprise.
"We had to recount [the applications] three times," said Mia Masten, Wal-Mart's director of corporate affairs, Midwest division.
When thousands of people compete for a few hundred ordinary jobs, trend watchers say it's an indication not only of a less-than-stellar economy but also of a workforce short on marketable skills.
The huge number of applicants wouldn't have caught anyone's eye had these been skilled, high-paying jobs, the types of positions that thousands of people always seek.
But these were regular retail jobs with low-to-average wages and benefits, not the sort of positions typically in high demand. Target wouldn't disclose the number of people who applied to work at its Steelyard Commons store.
Sadly, few of the people interested in working at Cleveland's first Wal-Mart actually got a job.
Those 6,000 people were competing for some 300 positions. That means for every one person hired, 19 people walked away empty-handed.
It could have been worse. In Illinois recently, Masten said, 25,000 and 15,000 people applied at two Wal-Mart stores in the Chicago area, and neither of those is a large Supercenter.
"Sometimes, it's easier to get into [someplace exclusive] than a job at Wal-Mart, statistically speaking," she said.
The Steelyard Commons Wal-Mart wasn't the first in Northeast Ohio to attract hordes of job hopefuls. At the newly opened Wal-Mart Supercenter in Streetsboro, the applicant pool was nearly 2,000, while the new Wal-Mart in Elyria drew 1,000.
Amy Hanauer, executive director of Policy Matters Ohio, said she finds these ratios "deeply troubling," reminiscent of bread lines in times of great poverty. She said the figures paint a bleak portrait of the regional job market and underscore the need for more and better employment opportunities.
"That's Depression-era kind of imagery," she said. ". . . You can't have an economy that works that way. It speaks to the need to generate a different kind of employment in Cleveland."
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