Continuing with the current book I’m reading Big Box Swindle by Stacy Mitchell I came across an important section titled The Jobs Mirage. This is important information to know because it is one of the main weapons in the arsenal of the chain retailers who try and unload a store in your neighborhood.

New big-box stores and shopping centers are almost invariably sold to communities as job creators. Developers, supportive local officials, and even newspapers routinely refer to the number of new jobs a particular project will bring. The Dayton Daily News reported that a new Target in Sugarcreek, Ohio, “will create 150 to 200 new jobs.” Wal-Mart is “expected to create 250 jobs,” Crain’s Chicago Business reported during the debate leading up to the approval of a superstore on the city’s west side. In Salem, Oregon, “the big-box store the Home Depot envisions could create nearly 200 jobs. ” according to the Statesman Journal. Many local officials, under pressure to demonstrate job growth during their terms, are only too eager to go along, appearing at ribbon-cuttings for the stores and hailing them as job generators. Many communities, having suffered through recent plant closures and economic instability-trends for which the retail chains are partly to blame-are desperate to believe these claims, welcoming anything that appears to create work, no matter how low-paid.

Yet in reality these corporations actually force independent business out of the area and thus the loss of jobs is greater than the jobs the big-boxes create. Also, the big-box jobs pay less than the jobs they replace in the area. The only reason people line up for these low scale retail jobs is because there’s nothing else left.

But the employment boost promised by the chains is nothing more than an illusion. It’s true that big-box stores create hundreds of retail jobs. But they eliminate as many by forcing other businesses to downsize or close. When Bob Sowers closed his three grocery stores in Athens, Ohio, 135 people lost their jobs. Sowers had spent twenty-seven years building up the business from the small convenience store he had started back in college. Then Wal-Mart arrive, opening a super center the size of four football fields. At first Sowers thought he would survive. Sales dropped only eight percent in the first year. “I was ecstatic. I thought, we can live with this,” he said. But that eight percent turned out to be all of his profit and then some. “When revenue drops, your expenses as a ratio of sales go way up. Then you are on a downward spiral,” he said. “You fine yourself not able to pay your bills and it’s humiliating. I ended up filing for bankruptcy.” The 135 people who lost their jobs were earning about twenty percent more than their counterparts at the new Wal-Mart, and had health insurance as well. “It’s just sickening what Wal-Mart, and had health insurance as well. “It’s just sickening what Wal-Mart has done to this community,” Sowers lamented. “I was just one of many in their path.” At least a dozen other businesses have closed in Wal-Mart’s wake, including a shoe store, tow record stores, another grocer, an an optician.

So the next time you hear that big-boxes create jobs, think again.