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Wal-Mart climbing up area’s largest-employer ladder
By Dennis Quick
Senior Staff Writer
When Vought Aircraft Industries and Alenia Aeronautica announced they would build an aircraft assembly complex in North Charleston employing about 645 workers, local leaders understandably applauded.
The opening this year of two Wal-Mart Supercenters—one in North Charleston, the other in Moncks Corner—created a total of roughly 775 new jobs, but just as understandably received far less fanfare.
After all, the aircraft parts assembly complex is projected to pay average salaries of $50,000 a year.
In South Carolina, Wal-Mart pays an average of $9.95 an hour.
Wal-Mart, which has eight stores in the tri-county area employing a total of more than 2,150 workers, ranks 10th among the Lowcountry’s top employers, according to the Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce’s regional 2005 Economic Profile and Forecast.
But with the two Wal-Mart Supercenters that opened this year (after the chamber released its economic forecast report), plus two additional Supercenters slated for the Lowcountry—a 218,000-square-foot store in West Ashley and a 203,000-square-foot emporium in Mount Pleasant—and each likely to employ anywhere from 250 to 450 workers, Wal-Mart could move higher up the area’s top employer rankings, surpassing Charleston County, Robert Bosch Corp., Piggly Wiggly Carolina Co. and the Berkeley County School District to become possibly the sixth largest employer.
Big-box bashing
Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart is the world’s largest corporation, with total revenues of $285 billion in 2005. It employs 1.2 million workers in the United States at about 3,600 stores.
Nationally, Wal-Mart’s critics have been bashing the big-box discount retailer as a hindrance to economic development. They contend that hiring lots of people at low wages, as Wal-Mart is accused of doing, weakens local economies.
According to The Effects of Wal-Mart on Local Labor Markets, a report issued by economists at the Public Policy Institute of California, Wal-Mart tends to drive down wages in a labor market. Also, because Wal-Mart puts smaller retail stores out of business and hires only some of the retail workers it displaced, the discount retail giant raises a labor market’s unemployment rate.
This is particularly prevalent in the South, where Wal-Mart has been open the longest, the report states.
Other critics claim Wal-Mart offers its employees meager benefits and, because most of its employees lack health insurance, increases Medicaid spending.
Wal-Mart’s defenders say the company makes food and other goods more affordable for lower-income families and plays a vital economic role in state economies.
Wal-Mart has 26,701 employees in South Carolina, according to the company’s Web site. In 2004, Wal-Mart spent more than $1.3 billion for merchandise and services from South Carolina suppliers. The company supports more than 35,830 supplier jobs in the state.
Limited local impact
Charleston County, which contains the bulk of the tri-county’s Wal-Mart stores, is economically and demographically diverse enough “to support the corner hardware store and Wal-Mart,” said Steve Dykes, Charleston County economic development director.
Dykes acknowledged there are cases in which a new Wal-Mart cuts into the profit margins of smaller stores but added this usually happens with the arrival of any big wholesaler.
Wal-Mart jobs are “just one more option in the local employment continuum,” Dykes added. “Some folks—seniors, students, others—may be happy to work there.”
Dennis Quick is senior staff writer at the Business Journal. E-mail him at dquick@charlestonbusiness.com.
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