(WAND) - McDonald's has announced it plans to hire 260,000 employees this summer in the United States.Â
The company's plan, announced as it has slowly started opening up restaurants during the COVID-19 pandemic, is similar to hiring plans announced by Subway, Taco Bell, Panda Express and Dunkin. However, according to CNBC, McDonald's plans are nearly double the combined plans of those four companies.
McDonald's has started to ease COVID-19 restrictions as more of America opens up. As of Monday, it allowed customers to sit at a table at 1,000 of it's 14,000 U.S. stores. It's also starting to add to the menu items it removed when the pandemic began in order to speed up operations.
The company was under fire during the pandemic because of low wages and alleged worker safety issues. At its Chicago locations, workers sued the company, making claims that the business didn't do enough to protect them from the virus.
McDonald's said it has implemented close to 50 new safety procedures in its summer hiring plan announcement.
The summer months are typically busy for hiring in the fast food business as customers spend higher amounts of money and teenagers seek work. Millions of restaurant workers lost their jobs during the pandemic, and according to the Department of Labor, the U.S. unemployment rate is 13.3% in mid June.
