Walmart raises minimum wage as retail labor market remains tight

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