Fact #570: From 1997 to 2004, the U.S. population grew 7.7 percent. If jobs in retailing had grown at the rate of the population, the country would have added 1.1 million retailing jobs during those seven years. The country however added just over that number – 670,000 new retail jobs. Out of those 670,000 jobs, Wal-Mart created 70 percent of them. The remaining new retail jobs – 190,000 in the nation over seven years amount to just 540 new retail jobs in each state, each year. While the number of Wal-Mart jobs grew 67 percent, the number of jobs in the rest of U.S. retail grew 1.3 percent. (Source: The Wal-Mart Effect)
Fact #571: While Wal-Mart was adding 480,000 jobs between 1997 and 2004, U.S. manufacturing jobs during those years fell by 3.1 million jobs, a loss of 37,000 factory jobs a month. For the first time in U.S. history, the number of Americans working in retail (14.9 million) was greater than the number of Americans working in factories (14.5 million)
(Source: The Wal-Mart Effect)
WalMart may indeed have been responsible for creating a large number of these jobs, but it must be noted that these jobs are mostly lowpaying positions with no benefits, not the kind of jobs that are really going to help the average American pay their rent and put food on the table.