"WASHINGTON - Wal-Mart Stores Inc. lowers consumer costs and adds jobs but has also led to a decline in wages and an increase in the number of people relying on government aid for health care, studies released on Friday show. At a conference sponsored by Wal-Mart to examine its impact on the U.S. economy, researchers found that the world's biggest retailer accounted for some 210,000 net jobs last year while driving nominal wages down 2.2 percent.
The world's biggest retailer also lowered consumer prices by 3.1 percent, and real disposable income was 0.9 percent higher than it would have been in a world without Wal-Mart, researchers at Global Insight concluded.
The one-day event comes as rapidly expanding Wal-Mart tries to counter increasingly vocal critics who contend that the retailer drives competitors out of business and pays poverty-level wages that push employees to seek government aid.
Wal-Mart, which stressed that it made no attempt to influence the studies, gave Global Insight access to its wage data from October 2004 and sales and employment information dating back to the mid-1980s.
In addition to that study, the research firm also vetted papers from other researchers and accepted nine, some of which were far more critical. One found that Wal-Mart stores increase Medicaid spending, while another showed that the retailer actually reduced employment in the retail sector."
-Emily Kaiser, Reutors.
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