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Walmart Offers To Foot College Tuition Bills for US Employees (bloomberg.com)
Walmart will begin offering to subsidize college tuition for its 1.5 million workers in the United States, joining a growing list of companies that are helping employees pay for higher education as a perk in a tight labor market. From a report: The retailer's 1.5 million employees can now pursue associate's or bachelor's degrees in business or supply-chain management at three nonprofit schools for $1 a day, according to a statement Wednesday. Walmart will subsidize tuition, books and fees and provide support with the application and enrollment processes. As many as 68,000 employees might sign up, Walmart executives estimated. "Many of our associates don't have the opportunity to complete a degree," said Drew Holler, Walmart's U.S. vice president of people innovation, in an interview. "We felt strongly that this is something that would improve their lives and help us run a better business." The tuition program -- offered to part-time staff as well as full-timers -- is the latest move by Walmart to improve employee retention and engagement. A handful of other companies, including Starbucks and Amazon, also offer tuition support.
WalMart makes their entire business on low prices, at a 3% profit margin (impressive). They've said they're neutral in minimum wage; they seem to support it, some say because a higher minimum wage will crush WalMart's small competitors.
Higher wages will inevitably lead to higher prices. It's not by much, but it's there. A $2 raise is about a 10% price increase on average--$20 pants become $22 pants--and they don't want everyone running to Target, causing loss of WalMart jobs, gain of Target jobs, and disruption for working families.
A minimum wage increase would cause a wage increase at WalMart and Target, causing the associated price increases. Structurally, nothing changes: WalMart still has lower prices, even if those prices are slightly-higher. Any impoverished Target employees shopping at WalMart are still shopping at WalMart, are better-paid, are paid more than enough to offset the price increases themselves, and so funnel more money into WalMart (so they can keep their same profit margin without as much of a price increase). WalMart gets richer.
It's WalMart's 3% NOP that gets me. That's insanely-low; it's impressive, to say the least. Adidas Shoes has 5%; about 8% is reasonable, just by being a common baseline; Comcast usually has 11%; and Microsoft and Apple hold above 20% NOP. I support a fair corporate income tax with a higher tax rate when the corporation's NOP is above reasonable levels; that generally means WalMart gets a tax cut and Apple gets to pay 48%. I don't honestly have a problem with this.
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If they raise pay, much of it is taxed away by payroll taxes (SS, SSDI, unemployment tax, etc) and is taxable income for the employee. Many of Walmart's employees qualify for EITC, and higher pay will push them out of that bracket. For every dollar extra that Walmart pays, about 60 cents ends up in the employee's pocket.
Tuition assistance avoids these problems. A dollar in is a dollar out.