McDonald’s hired more than 62,000 employees in April alone here in the U.S.
But in Europe? Different story.
Rather than hiring human cashiers, McDonald’s has announced that, in Europe, they’d instead be purchasing 7,000 new touch-screen kiosks to handle cashier duties.
With wages reaching unsustainably high levels in Europe–along with a high cost of doing business and an expensive welfare state–companies like McDonald’s simply can’t justify the expense of hiring workers in Europe anymore.
In America, where the cost of doing business is lower, it still makes sense to create jobs–but that might be changing too.
If pro-minimum wage activists have their way, machines could be replacing workers here in the U.S. too. Over the last few weeks in San Francisco, for instance, protesters have taken to the streets to demand a $15 per hour wage for fast food workers.
But the sad truth is that $1 hamburgers and $15 per hour wages just don’t add up.
If McDonald’s–which has seen declining sales and skyrocketing costs in recent months–is forced to pay a high minimum wage in the U.S. too, that means fewer jobs here in America. And a lot more robot cashiers.
