Walmart is laying off about 200 corporate employees, a person familiar with the matter told CNN, in a move that comes days after the retail giant issued a rare profit warning.
In a statement, Walmart confirmed it is “updating our structure and evolving select roles to provide clarity and better position the company for a strong future.”
Anne Hatfield, a Walmart spokesperson, declined to say how many workers will be affected and what divisions have experienced cuts. She said Walmart is still hiring in parts of its business that are growing, including supply chain, e-commerce, health and wellness, and advertising sales.
The job cuts come after Walmart last week cut its profit outlook for the second quarter and the remainder of the year, warning that high food and fuel costs have impacted how customers spend. Walmart said it has been forced to cut costs on various items, including apparel. Walmart also warned that it expects a slowdown in customer spending for general merchandise for the second half of the year.
U.S. job openings in June dropped sharply, but the labor backdrop remains tight, with 1.8 open jobs per available worker. Many of the companies that boomed during the pandemic, including Walmart’s major competitor Amazon, have started to scale back on hiring.
Amazon’s headcount shrank by 99,000 people to 1.52 million employees globally at the end of the second quarter. The company’s workforce had almost doubled in size during the Covid health crisis as it rushed to keep up with customer demand for groceries, puzzles and more online. That reduction was primarily due to attrition, Amazon Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky said on a call with reporters after the company’s second-quarter earnings report last week.
Other companies, including Shopify and Robinhood, have also recently announced layoffs. And still others, such as Facebook parent Meta and Google parent Alphabet, have said they will slow hiring or focus on more productivity with current workers.
It’s unclear whether Walmart has also slowed its pace of hiring at stores and warehouses, which would allow attrition to shrink its workforce. The company will report its quarterly earnings on Aug. 16 and will likely provide an update on overall headcount.
