Last month, hundreds of thousands of job-seekers descended on America’s favorite fast-food vendor, as part of a “national hiring day” that McDonald’s (MCD) hoped would fill 50,000 positions. There were sporadic incidents of violence — one store manager got run over with a car — but the more important outcome was that a whopping 62,000 applicants left with new employment.
Not surprisingly, lots of people have begun including those 62,000 in today’s surprisingly-strong April jobs report, which showed that non-farm payroll rose by 244,000. For example, here is the top of Drudge as of 11:15am:
And, just to be clear that Drudge is not alone, I tweeted something similar just after the numbers were released.
The reality, however, is that none of those new McJobs were included in the April report. The report refers to the pay period that includes the 12th of the month, which in April was a Tuesday. “National hiring day,” however, wasn’t until the following Tuesday, April 19. In other words, all those new burger flippers and french friers won’t get counted until the May jobs report.
Hopefully Drudge can just store away his headline for future use…