Getting a Job at McDonald's Harder Than Getting Accepted to the Ivy League

The McDonald's event must not be interpreted a normal circumstance. They almost certainly have marketing (or to use the older term, propaganda) reasons to promote and even hype the event. (It's odd that so many new sources had exactly the same comparison (see http://rt.com/usa/mcdonalds-applicans-america-middle-class/). It's almost as if there was a marketing campaign to push that comparison.)

Better would be to look at the yearly number of applicants vs. hires. Which I cannot find. I did find firm numbers on the world-wide number of employees:

approximately 400,000 as of year-end 2010 - http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/63908/000119312511046...

approximately 420,000 as of year-end 2011 - http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/63908/000119312512077...

approximately 440,000 as of year-end 2012 - http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/63908/000006390813000...

approximately 440,000 as of year-end 2013 - http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/63908/000006390814000...

If there were 60K+ new permanent jobs at McDonald's in the US in 2011 then I would have expected to see more than 20K new world-wide employees for 2011, or a report about significantly reduced employment positions overseas. Which I also didn't see.

This may indicate that people do not stay for a long time at McDonald's, so that 60+K new people isn't significant. (http://fistfuloftalent.com/2008/05/can-this-turnov.html suggets a turnover rate of about 44%/year.) It may also mean that franchisees were asked to hold off on hiring new people until that hiring day. There would well be other reasons to explain the disparity between 60K new jobs in the US and only 20K new employees worldwide.