McDonald's 50,000-person hiring spree: By the numbers

McDonald's is trying to change the longstanding image of "McJobs" — flipping burgers amidst grease splatters, fluorescent lighting, and screaming children — with a weeks-long PR push leading up to a massive hiring event on April 19. On that day, McDonald's Corp. plans to hire tens of thousands of employess. "We're excited to offer 50,000 new jobs, all across America, all in one day," says Jan Fields, the president of McDonald's U.S.A. Here, a brief guide, by the numbers, to the hiring spree:

50,000

Number of new employees McDonald's plans to hire in a nationwide, one-day event on April 19

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14,000

Number of McDonald's restaurants

About 650,000

Number of employees McDonald's currently has

13,000

Number of McDonald's employees that were hired in a similar event last year

65,000

Number of applicants for those 13,000 jobs

$518 million

Amount McDonald's say it will spend in wages on its new April 19 hires

$10,360

What that averages out to per worker. Some of the new hires will work part-time, and the positions they'll fill are at all levels, from cash register to management.

280,000

Total number of jobs the economy needs to add each month, every month, for the next five years, to get back to a pre-recession unemployment rate, according to Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute. "That will signify that we're in a real jobs recovery."

216,000

Number of jobs added to the economy in March

8.7 million

Number of jobs lost in the Great Recession

1.5 million

Number of jobs that have been recovered since the recession officially ended in 2009

$20,800

Median annual salary for those in the food preparation and service sector

$43,400

Median annual salary for all occupations

$50,000

Amount, per year, a McDonald's manager can make

$7.25/hour

Federal minimum wage

$15.95/hour

Median hourly wage across all occupations

$8.89/hour

Median hourly wage for those in the food preparation and service sector

$8.30/hour

Average pay for the new McDonald's jobs, according to Fields. "The thing that people forget is that if you want to spend $1 on food McDonald's can't have huge labor costs," said restaurant industry analyst Sara Senatore. "So part of the strategy of keeping food prices low is that labor costs have to be kept low, too."

Sources: CNN, Chicago Tribune, MSNBC