On Wednesday, McDonald’s announced its intentions to fill around 250k summer jobs ranging from cashiers to shift managers — by recruiting Grandma and Grandpa.
The fast-food behemoth is scouting elderly talent with posts on the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) job board.
While we’d love to attribute this to the goodness of Ronny McD’s greasy, chicken-nug-shaped heart, there’s another reason for the move: For the first time in nearly 2 decades, the number of available jobs has surpassed the number of available workers.
In other words, we’ve got a labor shortage on our hands.
While the percentage of teens (16 to 19) working summer jobs has fallen from more than 50% to 35% in the past 20 years, the 65+ crowd is the fastest-growing segment of the workforce.