Great Recovery: McDonald’s To Hire 260K People In The US As Pandemic Lockdowns Come To An End

McDonald’s plans to hire more than a quarter of a million people over the course of the summer as economic lockdowns continue to slow down, the company announced Thursday.

The restaurant chain will add 260,000 employees as it reopens dining rooms after shutting down amid lockdowns designed to slow the spread of the coronavirus, or COVID-19, according to the president of the company.

“We’ve put new minimum national standards and nearly 50 new processes in place in our restaurants as they continue to reopen safely and judiciously,” Joe Erlinger, president of McDonald’s USA, said Thursday in a press release. McDonald’s plans to hire a mix of full- and part-time positions.

Retail sales jumped 17.7% in May, doubling expectations and marking the biggest single-month gain in records going back decades, according to a Commerce Department report released Tuesday. A Bloomberg News survey of economists had anticipated 8.4% increase in retail sales in May as COVID-19-related measures melted away following a 14% decline in April.

Employment numbers have also rebounded faster than expectations. Payroll employment rose by 2.5 million in May, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics report published June 5, and the number of unemployed dropped by 2.1 million to a total 21.0 million.

COVID-19 originated in Wuhan, China, in late December before going global, killing a reported 116,000 people in the United States.

Governors and mayors across the United States instituted strict stay-at-home orders, which resulted in tens of millions of Americans applying for unemployment.