Today's the Day: McDonald's Kicks Off Hiring Binge

McDonald's ends up hiring 62K new workers

(NEWSER) - McDonald's national hiring binge is done, and the chain ended up handing out 24% more jobs than the 50,000 it said it would. And those 62,000 new employees must be la creme de la creme, because they were chosen from a field of more than 1 million applicants, reports Bloomberg . That's right, number-crunches the Consumerist : McDonald's turned down more than 938,000 would-be workers. Quips Ben Popken, "It's a snapshot of how well the economy is doing when you have so many people clamoring for such a low-tier job." Perhaps it's also a sign that the whole rebranding-the-McJob thing is working? More»

Home Depot and McDonald's lead the way

(USER SUBMITTED) - Most recessions end as small companies regain the capital needed to hire small numbers of workers at a time. That will most likely not happen this time around, however, because smaller companies have little capital and banks are hesitant to give out loans, reports 24/7 Wall Street . So which large companies plan to hire this year? More»

Will swell its US ranks to 700K

(NEWSER) - McDonald's is going on a 24-hour hiring binge: The company plans to add 50,000 new workers to its ranks on April 19. The new McJobs will boost the US workforce to 700,000, reports CNN . Full- and part-time positions are open, with the average pay clocking in at $8.30 an hour (the federal minimum wage is $7.25); managers can walk home with as much as $50,000 a year. And lest you think Newser is being cruel by referring to these employment opportunities as McJobs ... well, we're just respecting McDonald's wishes. More»

Care for some fertilizer with your burger?

(NEWSER) - Duck feathers, human hair, fertilizer: These are among the ingredients you may be ingesting every time you chow down on fast food. That's because the FDA has deemed certain additives to be "generally recognized as safe," even though it may creep you out to learn of them. On Mother Nature Network , Melissa Breyer runs down eight of the most disturbing:

• Duck feathers and human hair: These two unappealing things are the most common sources for an amino acid, l-cysteine, used to make dough easier to process. McDonald's uses l-cysteine, the duck feather kind, in its apple pie.
• Fertilizer: Ammonium sulfate is also commonly used, as "yeast food for bread," in fast food bakery products. But it can also act as a fertilizer for alkaline soils.

200K jobs added in December: jobs report

(NEWSER) - A better-than-expected jobs report shows that 2011 ended with a bang: The unemployment rate fell to 8.5% last month, the lowest since February 2009, and 200,000 new jobs were added, the Wall Street Journal reports. The jobs report was expected to be solid, but not this solid: Unemployment had been expected to rise from 8.6% to 8.7%, and 150,000 new jobs were forecasted, according to the AP . More good news: October's jobs were revised upward by 12,000, but November's were revised downward by around 2,000. More»