McDonald's: Fully Aware It's Not Paying Employees a Living Wage

Are you a McDonald’s employee trying to get by on an average of $8.25 an hour? You’re in luck: the mutant chicken nugget provider now offers an extremely patronizing budgeting service for its workers.

From its website, which lists Visa as a partner:

Sometimes keeping track of what’s coming in and going out seems complicated. But managing your money can be simple. Really.

Here you’ll find a Budget Journal to help you make financial goals, build budgets and track your spending. Once you begin, you’ll see that every day and every dollar really do make a difference.

Low Pay Is Not Ok crunched the numbers, and the numbers are fucked.

First up on the budget: get a second job. Oh sure, no prob! $600 is allocated to “mortgage,” which would be funny if “health insurance” wasn’t $20 and heating was free, just like it was for Sara Crewe in A Little Princess. But honey: we’re not at Miss Minchin’s boarding school for girls living next to a mysterious Indian benefactor anymore.

McDonald’s forgot to tally up food, water, clothing, gas, childcare (might come in handy with those two jobs and all!) and everything else. Frivolities! But an employee would need to bring in $2060 in net income each month to survive even under those beyond unrealistic parameters.

At 40-60 hours a week, that’s $12.86 an hour, or about $15/hr before taxes — a far cry from $8.25. Did you really need that roof over your head?