Cash Money In The Minimum-Wage World

Have you been angry yet today?

Here is a list of the U.S.' companies with the most minimum-wage workers.

What do they have in common? Right-wing pundits would say ''they are rich because they control their spending well''. The rest of the world would think ''perhaps they could all afford to pay their employees better, what with the insane amount of profits they make''.

Despite the perception that minimum wage jobs are often held by teenage workers entering the job market, numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) indicate that 49 percent of minimum wage workers are adult women, many of whom have children.

As expected, America’s largest employer, Wal-Mart, tops the list.  NELP’s study looks into the genetic makeup of this dishonorable mention, and notes the majority (66 percent) of low‐wage workers are not employed by small businesses, but rather by large corporations where top executive compensation averaged $9.4 million.

The 50 largest employers of low‐wage workers have largely recovered from the recession and most are in strong financial positions: 92 percent were profitable last year; 78 percent have been profitable for the last three years; 75 percent have higher revenues now than before the recession; 73 percent have higher cash holdings; and 63 percent have higher operating margins(a measure of profitability).

$174.8 billion to shareholders in dividends or share buybacks over the past five years.
The largest companies in America have, for the most part, recovered from the recession while their workers are still feeling its entire effects. It is safe to say that we should soundly reject the argument that raising the minimum wage would harm large corporations. They don’t know harm well enough to claim it.

Yep, it's a good world for profiteering assholes.