Easier To Get into Harvard than To Get a Job at Walmart

Perhaps it is the best expression of the arch-famous division between the 1 percent and the 99 percent. In the United States, finding a job at a company where half the employees receive food stamps is twice as difficult as being accepted into Harvard, or three times as difficult as getting into Stanford’s Masters of Business Administration program, the most expensive MBA in the country.

The supermarket chain Wal-Mart provides the most obvious example of this. At the end of 2013, the business opened its first two stores in the District of Columbia — that is, the city of Washington. It received 23,000 applications for just 600 jobs; rather, it rejected 97.3 percent of the applicants.

By contrast, Harvard, the most exclusive Ivy League school, only rejected 94.2 percent of those hoping to complete their undergraduate studies there. Stanford’s MBA program accepted 7 percent of its applicants. What is much more difficult is being accepted by Wal-Mart, which is famous in the United States for its tough labor politics that reflect the nation’s labor market. As Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen stated last week, “In some ways the market is tougher now than in any recession.”

It is true that the unemployment rate has been at a stable 6.7 percent since the beginning of the year. Also, the active population is beginning to grow again, which indicates that Americans know that if they look for work, work will eventually appear. However, in the lowest economic sector, there continues to be an immense reserve of low-skilled people, who are long-term unemployed, whose wages do not increase, and for whom new opportunities do not exist. In fact, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, for each six additional months of unemployment, the possibilities of finding work decrease by about 45 percent.

In fact, 28 percent of jobs in the U.S. pay low salaries,* according to a study by the Political Economy Institute, which defines these employment positions as those where the salary equals less than half the minimum rent necessary to support a family of four. In 2010, when the labor market crisis was at its peak, this percentage was exactly the same. In 2020, according to the study, it will continue at 28 percent of all jobs.

On top of that, the purchasing power of the salaries of these low remunerating jobs is falling: Between 2008 and 2011, it fell about 2.3 percent, more than double the amount that the pay for work considered mid-level fell, according to a study by the California consulting company Sentier.**

Washington’s Wal-Marts reflect this situation. The American capital is one of the nation’s most expensive cities. In order to belong to the 1 percent, one must make 447,500 euros ($620,000) annually, or nearly double that for the entire United States.*** Yet, its unemployment rate is 7.5 percent, almost one percentage point higher than the national average.

In this paradise for the 1 percent, it is not surprising that 23,000 people have aspired to work at a company that on average pays 6.36 euros ($8.80) an hour — without accounting for taxes and social security — into their bank accounts, what would be an annual average of about 14,000 euros ($20,000).

*Editor’s note: According to ThinkProgress, in 2012, this percentage (28 percent) actually referred to the percentage of workers in the U.S. who will work low-paying jobs, not the percentage of jobs.

**Editor’s note: This company is unverifiable. According to the Financial Times, this figure was 3.2 percent for the 2008-2011 period.

***Editor’s note: According to Forbes, in 2012, the average annual salary of the 1 percent for the entire U.S. was $717,000.