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Say (in order to seem like a more established company) someone wants to advertise "We have over 100+ employees!".(but wants to avoid false advertising!)

But the company has a budget of only $1000 a month to pay 100 employees..

Can the employer not hire 100+ hourly employees then only schedule 2 of them to work 1 hour per week on a budget under $1000...

Is there realistically a legal way to "hire" 100+ employees on a budget of under $1000 so that you can advertise truthfully?

This would hypothetically be in Pennsylvania.

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  • No "employee" would ever agree to work like that.
    – Ron Beyer
    Commented Dec 22, 2019 at 3:02
  • @RonBeyer it sounds like you are saying "in theory" this could be done but in practice this would not work because No "employee" would agree to do that?
    – user55665484375
    Commented Dec 22, 2019 at 3:38
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    It may be legal to "hire" 100 people and only give them 2 hours a year, but no person would agree to that, and they would probably be classified as 1099 contractors anyway. It would be cost-prohibitive since you still need to pay certain taxes (like FICA) and keep track of all those employees and time. I think you'd spend more than $1000 a week just doing that. You'd also never get anything done because 2 hours isn't enough for retraining every year, much less productive work.
    – Ron Beyer
    Commented Dec 22, 2019 at 3:45
  • @RonBeyer please see my comments to the other answer and rephrase this comment as an answer. I will most likey mark it a correct answer to my question. Say we did not keep track of the employees at all and still had to pay taxes could this be done under a budget of $1000 (if an applicant were willing?)
    – user55665484375
    Commented Dec 22, 2019 at 20:50
  • A $1000 per month budget sounds like an expensive hobby, not a company.
    – T.J.L.
    Commented Jan 29, 2020 at 16:08

1 Answer 1

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It is enough for an advert to be misleading. Even if you really had 100 employees working two hours a week each, any reasonable person would interpret "we have over 100 employees" as "we have at least 101 employees, possibly with a reasonable percentage of part time employees".

You would be guilty of false advertising. Correct would be "we have the equivalent of five full-time employees".

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  • I disagree. If we were to advertise "We have 100 full time employees" that would be false advertising. My real question I guess is what defines an "employee" in US and PA law? If based on what I'm describing does fall under that definition then I feel as though the statement is true. Please explain your thinking further.
    – user55665484375
    Commented Dec 22, 2019 at 20:46
  • I would agree on your statement about it being misleading but not FALSE (think FALSE advertising (not misleading advertising)). As in "is that statement true or false"(a lie, or a truthful statement)(binary no room for arguing)
    – user55665484375
    Commented Dec 22, 2019 at 20:53
  • @user55665484375 Don't downvote answers if they don't confirm what you want them to confirm. What counts is not if you say the truth or not, but if you choose words that case people to believe the truth or not.
    – gnasher729
    Commented Dec 24, 2019 at 12:57
  • "What counts is not if you say the truth or not, but if you choose words that case people to believe the truth or not." Can you site this somewhere? Is that the case all the time or 99% of the time? I down voted this answer because you are predicting a judgment "You would be guilty of false advertising" but site no legal text explaining why...
    – user55665484375
    Commented Dec 30, 2019 at 16:20

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