Walmart Cutting Hundreds of Jobs and Shifting Workers to HQ

Walmart is reportedly eliminating hundreds of positions as it moves employees to its main hubs.

The job cuts coincide with the closure of one of the retail giant’s offices in North Carolina, FOX Business reported Tuesday (Feb. 4), citing an internal memo sent to employees.

In that memo, the report said, Walmart Chief People Officer Donna Morris said the company is reducing roles and asking office-based employees in Hoboken and some of its smaller offices to move to the company’s new headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, along with its office in Sunnyvale, California.

“We are making these changes to put key capabilities together, encouraging speed and shared understanding,” Morris wrote. “Through this review process, we have eliminated some roles as we streamline how we work.”

It was not clear how many workers will be impacted, as the employees who are being asked to relocate have at least a month to let Walmart know if they’ll agree to the move.

PYMNTS has contacted Walmart for comment but has not yet gotten a reply.

The company made a similar move last year, cutting hundreds of jobs and asking workers at Dallas, Atlanta and Toronto to relocate to central hubs like Bentonville.

News of the latest layoffs comes amid cuts at a number of other high-profile companies. For example, beauty products maker Estée Lauder said Tuesday it was eliminating as many as 7,000 jobs following a drop in sales in markets around the world, while Salesforce is reportedly cutting more than 1,000 positions.

As PYMNTS reported last month, the number of Americans receiving unemployment insurance reached a three-year high during the second week of January.

Around the same time, the University of Michigan’s January Surveys of Consumers found a drop in consumer sentiment, driven by concerns about inflation and unemployment.

The latest PYMNTS Intelligence reveals that 65% of consumers are living paycheck to paycheck, with 24% struggling to pay their bills.

“That’s nearly a quarter of Americans playing an exhausting game of financial whack-a-mole, deciding which bills to pay in full, which to pay partially and which to outright ignore until the next paycheck arrives,” PYMNTS wrote earlier this week.

“This financial strain has led many to prioritize immediate survival over long-term financial planning, with a significant portion of American consumers adopting short-term, reactive strategies to manage their financial obligations.”