On one hand, I want to say good on them. While I'm sure this was mostly a PR thing, at a time when unemployment is high (especially for unskilled laborers) any news like "62,000 new hires" seems like good news.

On the other hand, 62,000 new employees nationwide breaks down to something like 3-4 new employees per store. This sort of large-scale, top-down action seems like it has huge potentials to create inefficiencies. How many of these new hires will be let go in a month because they're not needed? Maybe none, maybe there really were 62,000 positions to be filled nationwide and each store was able to hire the exact right number of folks.

Which brings me to my third hand, that is, a well-publicized "national hiring event" certainly was smart -- it probably brings in a much larger pool of applicants, letting them select more well-qualified people all at once, rather than on an ad-hoc basis.