The arts and crafts chain Hobby Lobby announced their companies will raise their full-time employees’ beginning hourly wage to $18.50 beginning January 1, 2022. In 2014 the company raised their beginning hourly wage to $15.
Hobby Lobby founder and CEO, David Green said in a statement:
We have a long track record of taking care of our employees. In 1998, we made the decision to close our stores on Sundays, and at 8:00 p.m. the rest of the week, to provide employees time for rest, family, and worship. We’ve also worked hard over the years to provide the best pay and benefits in retail, which has allowed us to attract and retain an outstanding group of associates to serve our devoted customers.
Green added that he was thankful to be sharing the success of the company with the thousands of Hobby Lobby employees at the beginning of the new year.
In addition to the high hourly wage, the statement noted that full-time employees would receive “outstanding medical, prescription, and dental plan, 401(k) with generous company match, flexible spending plan, long-term disability benefits, life insurance, vacation pay, personal paid time off benefits with annual buyback, holiday pay, chaplain services, and an employee discount.”
Earlier this year, Hobby Lobby announced it was raising its part-time wage for holiday employees by 18 percent. The new seasonal staff of about 11,000 workers began receiving $13 an hour in October of this year. The statement added that since the company had established a minimum wage over the federal minimum wage in 2009, they had continued to raise the minimum wage 11 times over the past 12 years.
Hobby Lobby was founded in 1972 in Oklahoma. There are now 956 retail stores across the country with over 80,000 arts, crafts, hobbies, home accents, seasonal, and custom framing products for customers that Hobby Lobby calls “Those who seek to Live a Creative Life.”
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Morgan Nicole Veysey is a reporter for The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow her on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected]
Photo “Hobby Lobby at night” by DangApricot CC BY-SA 3.0.
Glad HL employees are getting a small pay raise! Retail employees these days put up with so much abuse from customers! People can be so rude and mean in check out lanes. I see it everyday. Retail is a very underpaid position. HL obviously “gets it” and has stepped up to keep good employees. This is good.
Stupid is as stupid does. I will take my business elsewhere.
Care to elaborate? Or did you just read the headline and regurgitate what you heard on talk radio?
Glad to elaborate…. Any business that arbitrarily raises its costs, wages or otherwise, will either (1) reduce the shareholders stock value through added operating cost or (2) drive away devoted customers such as me by artificially raising prices. In all likelihood these moves will cause both (1) and (2). I can buy their imported goods elsewhere and will.