Lede

Walmart is cutting over 2,000 jobs at five US warehouses due to reductions in evening and weekend shifts, which may not be the end of layoffs that are affecting large companies.

Summary

• Walmart is laying off over 1,000 jobs in Texas, 600 in Pennsylvania, 400 in Florida, and 200 in New Jersey at five warehouses that fulfill website orders.
• The layoffs are due to reductions and elimination in evening and weekend shifts, according to Worker Adjustment Retraining Notification (WARN) filings.
• Walmart warned investors to expect slower sales and profit growth in its most recent earnings and is trying to retain store workers by raising its average minimum wage from $12 to $14 an hour in a tight labor market for lower-wage industries.
• The layoffs may impact Walmart's profit and squeeze margins while its core lower-income shoppers are being hit by inflation, which could dent its sales this year.
• Walmart CFO John Rainey said that consumers are still very pressured, and economic indicators such as balance sheets running thinner and savings rates declining are why they take a pretty cautious outlook on the rest of the year.
• Walmart hasn't had mass layoffs like Amazon, which has eliminated about 30,000 jobs since the beginning of the year across several divisions.
• The layoffs at Amazon come amid a spate of job cuts in the technology industry due to pandemic-induced demand for digital goods and services and broader macroeconomic uncertainty.