Walmart raises minimum wage as retail labor market remains tight

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: CNBC

Walmart said Tuesday that it is raising its minimum wage for store employees to $14 an hour, representing a roughly 17% jump for the workers who stock shelves and cater to customers. Starting in early March, store employees will make between $14 and $19 an hour. They currently earn between $12 and $18 an hour, according to Walmart spokeswoman Anne Hatfield.

With the move, the retailer’s U.S. average wage is expected to be more than $17.50, Walmart U.S. CEO John Furner said in an employee-wide memo on Tuesday. About 340,000 store employees will get a raise because of the move, Hatfield said. That amounts to a pay increase for roughly 21% of Walmart’s 1.6 million employees.

The retail giant, which is the country’s largest private employer, is hiking pay at an interesting moment. Some economists are calling for a recession. Prominent tech companies, media organizations and banks, including Google, Amazon and Goldman Sachs, have laid off thousands of employees and set off alarm bells. And weaker sales trends have prompted retailers, including Macy’s and Lululemon, to recently warn investors about a tougher year ahead.

But so far, retailers have largely avoided job cuts. Instead, they are still grappling with a tight labor market. Retail, compared with other industries, tends to have higher churn than other industries — which allows employers to manage their headcount by slowing the backfilling of jobs said Gregory Daco, chief economist for EY Parthenon, the global strategy consulting arm of Ernst & Young.

Read more: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/24/walmart-raises-minimum-wage-as-retail-labor-market-remains-tight.html

[ificandream]

1. Should be more, but this is a good start.

[marybourg]

2. "Some economists are calling for a recession"

“Calling for “ used to mean “requesting”. I guess now it means “predicting”???

[rurallib]

3. predicting what they can help make happen

[Yavin4]

15. Then they better find more humans

Demographic changes (Covid deaths, Boomer retirements, early retirements, restrictions on immigration) have created a tight labor market which means low wage workers will see more and more competition for their services.

[BumRushDaShow]

4. In one respect that meaning has been true

because the M$M HAVE been "requesting" one just based on all the bullshit stories that have released the past year. I.e., there seems to be some kind of mandatory requirement to insert the word "inflation" somewhere in most story content - whether the story is related to "economics or not".

[IronLionZion]

5. They want it really bad

and doing what they can to make it happen. They think of it as a correction for high prices and labor shortage. They don't want to try alternatives like more legal immigration or reversing Trump's tax cuts.

[Chellee]

6. It still means that.

Melissa Repko is a sloppy writer, and her editor has fallen down on their job. Or maybe the economists that she talks to are calling for a recession because they care more about corporate profits than people's lives?

Honestly, it could go either way.

[GB_RN]

7. The Labor Market Is NOT Tight...

People just don’t want to work for shitty wages, no/shitty benefits and abuse from the public anymore. Also, there are a lot of people who have dropped out of the job market because it’s cheaper to stay home to take care of kids than pay for day care, etc.,. These people are not counted in the unemployment figures.

[BumRushDaShow]

8. Technically use of the term "tight" is in reference to the employers

vs the employees, which is a rare occurence - especially when you still have (I think the last I saw) 1.5 openings for every potential employee.

That's why they finally relented to a minimum wage increase - although according to the OP article, it would only be affecting 21% of their workforce (am guessing because other locations might already have higher minimum wage requirements).

[DENVERPOPS]

9. My entire life

I have heard the Corporations complain "We can't find anyone who wants to work"

In reality, I have always thought they should have finished the sentence......

"We can't find anyone who wants to work", FOR WHAT WE WANT TO PAY THEM.................

[OldBaldy1701E]

10. Exactly.

It always makes me laugh to watch them try the most inane and expensive things to try and pull in more employees, but paying them a decent wage, offering them actual healthcare instead of a 'surface' program, and treating them with some respect since they are the ones making said corporation owners richer. But, NOOOOOOOOOOOO....

[DENVERPOPS]

11. The Corporations have pulled another one

Broadcasting that they have raised wages to help the lower income and fixed income people.....

And then the recent practice of raising prices substantially, and cutting the size of their packaging.

Those price increases, for less product, by far offset any increase in wages.......

I can only think of the multitude of people on minimum wage and fixed incomes suffering. What with the MASSIVE increases in their Utilities, the INCREDIBLE price increases at the gas pumps, and the Profiteering at the grocery stores......all designed by the Corporations to drive those people down, and raise the Corporations up......

This is absolutely despicable, the future certainly appears to be: Corporate Fascists of America and an outright tyranny.........

[OldBaldy1701E]

13. Or... well, I cannot say it without getting in trouble.

But it rhymes with 'evolution'. And, it is fast becoming the only way to stop this. Gods help us all.

[DENVERPOPS]

14. Why do you think the Repubs are such 2nd amendment fanatics?

An outrageously, proportional percentage of gun ownership is in the hands of Republicans, esp Trumphumpers.....

Sad, but true OB...........

[OldBaldy1701E]

17. Very true.

But that does not scare me. I could care less about their metal dildos or their insanity. Most of them couldn't even hit a stationary target anyway.

[louis-t]

12. It's the absolute, bare minimum, least they can do.

This from one of the wealthiest families in the world. And only because they can't find anyone to work for $10 an hour anymore. Even after all the whining about "no one wants to work anymore". They are about to find a few thousand more workers.

[Yavin4]

16. The number of major businesses relying on low wage workers has exploded.

From retail chains like WalMart, Target, Amazon to food chains like McDonalds, Starbucks, Chipotle to ride sharing service like Uber, Lyft to food delivery services like Instacart and GrubHub, all of these businesses rely on a steady supply of workers willing to work at low wages.

But given demographic trends, these companies are going to be in for a pitch battle to attract workers.

[Marthe48]

18. But the ceos, other top brass

will continue raking in obscene amounts of profit, and continue to contribute as little tax on their take as they can get away with, as they raise prices and put the entire burden of their operation and overhead costs on the customers.

Just like every other ceo, business owner, etc in the world.