Study Out on Wal-Mart's Job Creation

A new study of Wal-Mart's job creation track record, conducted by the University of Missouri-Columbia, concludes the world's largest employer has created more jobs in each of its stores' first five years of operation than their surrounding communities lost during the same period.

Between 1977 and 1998, new Wal-Mart stores created a net increase of 50 jobs per site, according to research by Emek Basker, an economics professor at the university. The research, published in January, examines data from 2,383 stores built in 1,749 U.S. counties during a 21-year span. Basker studied each location during the five-year period before store construction began and the five years after it was completed.

This is a very unimpressive study! I think the important thing to not lose track of is that most jobs created by Wal-Mart are low-pay, non-career jobs. Moreover, the jobs created at Wal-Mart are displacing jobs elsewhere in local economies.

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