Thinking Outside the Bun

Fast-Food Jobs Are a Starting Point, Not a Dead End

McDonald's has a beef with the editors at Merriam-Webster. It has to do with the new entry for "McJob" in the 11th edition of Merriam-Webster's collegiate dictionary, which defines the term as a dead-end occupation.

In the newspaper business, we appreciate the almost irresistible temptation of the prefix "Mc," whether it is used for McMansions (the oversized homes sprouting in suburbia) or McPaper (the epithet hurled at USA Today).

But McDonald's is onto something.However derisively editors, academics and pundits might use "McJobs" as a metaphor for a nation of burger-flippers, the reality is that McDonald's fills a real-and valuable-niche in America's increasingly sophisticated labor market.

First Jobs

There's no denying that such jobs are generally low-paying. But though the concept of McJobs is almost always invoked to convey a grim future where middle-aged fathers are forced to trade in well-paid positions on the Ford factory line for a McDonald's spatula, more often than not, the process works in reverse.

After all, a big reason these jobs are low-paying is that they are generally first jobs: According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, nearly two out of three food-counter and fountain workers are 16 to 19 years old (which also explains the high proportion without high-school diplomas). To define such jobs as requiring "little skill" overlooks the more important factor here, which has to do with the general disciplines they help instill in a mostly beginning work force: courtesy, punctuality, neatness, etc.

Ditto for opportunity. Put simply, most of these burger-flippers are not supporting a family. Precisely because these jobs are low-paying, they provide a ladder into the American workplace.

This ladder of opportunity remains a fact of American life. In a recent study of earnings mobility in California, economist Michael Dardia found that for most young people, minimum-wage jobs such as those in retail or fast food are only a temporary stop on the way up. "Condemning retail jobs as 'dead-end' jobs misses the point that these are primarily entry-level jobs for entering or part-time workers," says Mr. Dardia. "The important issue is where workers end up-not where they start."

Varied Demographic

It helps to remember that the McDonald's employee demographic is a varied one: students working their way through school, immigrants getting their introduction to the U.S. labor force, seniors looking to keep busy, parents supplementing the family income, and even, yes, the occasional breadwinner down on his luck and looking for immediate cash. Blaming McDonald's for not making jobs designed for the proverbial family of four is like blaming GM or Toyota for not making all their cars station wagons.

It's worth mentioning, too, that Fortune magazine recently designated the hamburger giant as America's best company for minorities, and that McDonald's really has something it calls "McJOBS": a 20-year-old program that trains the mentally and physically handicapped for jobs they otherwise might never get.

Do you agree that fast-food industry jobs are a stepping stone to better positions? Write to us.