A recent debate about the earnings of Wal-Mart’s CEO and average wages in the company has raised the question of subsistence wages paid by the company to its workers. Critics have pointed out that Wal-Mart’s CEO earns 1034 times more than the average wages paid by the company (Huddleston, 2015; Ramakrishnan, 2015). However, this brings forth the question if the average wages paid at Wal-Mart match the national average. This study aims to compare the average wages at Wal-Mart and the US national average from 2910 to 2014. The required data for the study has been derived from the Annual Reports of Wal-Mart, US Bureau of Labor Statistics, and other secondary sources.
Table 1 presents a comparison of the average wages per hour paid at Wal-Mart and the hourly national average. This demonstrates that the wages at Wal-Mart are lower than the national average. The comparison shows the annual national wage in 2010 was 49.34% more than wages paid at Wal-Mart. In 2014, the difference reduced to 42.03%. However, the difference in wages is significantly high.
Table 1: A comparison of wages at Wal-Mart and the US national average. Sources: (Annual Report, 2010; Annual Report, 2011; Annual Report, 2012; Annual Report, 2013; Annual Report, 2014; Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2014)
The above table indicates the discrepancy in wages paid by Wal-Mart to its employees and the national average. On computing the real wages using the annual Consumer Price Index (CPI), it is observed that real wages too are much lower than the national average (BSL, 2014). The rate of increase in wages at Wal-Mart is higher than the increase in the national average, but the difference in real wages shows a significant difference (see Table 2).
Table 2: Computation of Real wage. Source: (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2014)
References
Annual Report.(2010). Web.
Annual Report. (2011). Web.
Annual Report. (2012). Web.
Annual Report. (2013). Web.
Annual Report. (2014). Web.
Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2014). Databases, Tables & Calculators by Subject. Web.
Huddleston, T. J. (2015). A Wal-Mart worker making $9 an hour would have to work 2.8 million hours to match the CEO’s pay.Fortune. Web.
Ramakrishnan, S. (2015). Wal-Mart to raise wages for 100,000 U.S. workers in some departments. Reuters. Web.