Walmart Is Laying Off 1,500 Corporate Employees: 'Reshaping Our Structure' The layoffs affect Walmart's global technology, advertising, and e-commerce teams.
By Sherin Shibu Edited by Melissa Malamut
Key Takeaways
- Walmart is making job cuts that affect 1,500 corporate employees.
- The retailer is reducing roles to become more efficient and move faster.
- Walmart had 1.6 million U.S. employees in 2024.
Months after asking corporate employees in smaller offices to relocate to its headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, or hub in Sunnyvale, California, Walmart is eliminating 1,500 jobs at these locations and other offices across the country.
Walmart Chief Technology Officer Suresh Kumar and U.S. Chief Executive Officer John Furner informed staff in a memo on Wednesday, which reportedly said the company is reducing roles on its global technology team, advertising business, and the e-commerce fulfillment team that handles digital orders.
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"Reshaping our structure allows us to accelerate how we deliver and adapt to the changing environment around us," the Walmart executives wrote in the memo, which was viewed by The Wall Street Journal. They wrote that Walmart was creating some new positions in addition to cutting roles, though they did not give details about the new jobs.
Walmart had about 2.1 million global employees in 2024, the highest of all companies that year. About 1.6 million of its employees work in the U.S., most in stores.
A Walmart spokesperson told the WSJ that the layoffs were related to the company's "business priorities" and "growth strategy" and were not a result of tariffs.
Last week, Walmart said that it would raise prices in response to tariffs in late May and June, stating that even the reduced tariffs were more than it could absorb. President Donald Trump then criticized Walmart, urging the company to "eat the tariffs" in a Saturday post on Truth Social.
Walmart is the largest retailer in the world based on revenue, making $681 billion in 2024.
Walmart's layoffs follow a restructuring in February, when Walmart shut down its Charlotte, North Carolina, office and laid off hundreds of employees. At the time, Walmart gave corporate employees in smaller offices, like the one in Hoboken, New Jersey, the option to relocate to its headquarters or 719,000-square-foot office in Sunnyvale, California.
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Walmart has been trying to bring its corporate workforce together for the past few years. In May 2024, the retailer began requiring hundreds of remote workers to work in person at one of its offices. Most staff chose to comply with the change, though some chose to quit rather than return to the office.
Social media users on Reddit were quick to point out that some corporate Walmart employees were forced to move to Arkansas last year, and now their roles could be eliminated.
"Imagine moving your whole family, only to get laid off anyway," one Reddit user wrote.
The return-to-office order "was a soft layoff," another user stated.
New research has found that some return-to-office mandates can be a layoff in disguise. A study released last June from human resource platform BambooHR showed that 25% of senior executives hoped that employees would quit due to an order to return to the office.
