Employees line up gift boxes of beauty products for sale at a Wal-Mart Stores Inc. store in Los Angeles, California.
Patrick T. Fallon | Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
walmart announced Tuesday it will raise the minimum wage for store employees to $14 an hour. This equates to about a 17% increase in employees stocking shelves and serving customers.
Beginning in early March, employees will be paid between $14 and $19 an hour. They now earn between $12 and $18 an hour, according to Walmart spokeswoman Anne Hatfield.
The move is expected to push average U.S. hourly wages for retailers above $17.50.
About 340,000 employees will get pay increases from the move, Hatfield said. That equates to a pay raise of about 21% for his 1.6 million employees at Walmart.
The country’s largest private employer, the retail giant, is raising wages at an interesting time.The weakening trend in retail sales has seen companies such as: Macy’s When lululemonrecently warned investors of a tougher year ahead.
Prominent technology companies, media organizations, banks, etc. Google, Amazon When goldman sachsHave laid off thousands of employees and sound the alarm. Still, the job market remains strong.non-farm payroll growth slowed slightly in December, But it was better than expected.And the number of Americans claiming new unemployment benefits fell last week.
So far, retailers have largely avoided layoffs. Instead, they continue to grapple with a tight labor market.
Retail tends to have higher turnover rates than other industries, and employers can manage workforce numbers by delaying job backfills, according to Ernst & Young’s Global Strategy. Gregory Daco, chief economist at EY Parthenon, its consulting arm, said: .
Still, he said retailers may be planning cautiously, too. Over the past 18 months, they have had to work hard to recruit and retain workers. Losing too many employees can make hiring and training new ones costly, he said.
“Any retailer will have to think carefully and think twice about laying off a significant portion of their workforce,” he said.
In a Walmart employee memo, Farner said the pay increases will be part of annual increases for many employees. It also applies to working store employees, the company said.
Walmart also has other perks to attract and retain employees. Farner said they are adding more college degrees and certificates to their Live Better U program, which covers tuition and fees for part-time and full-time workers. We are looking for employees to increase jobs and become truck drivers. This job can pay up to $110,000 in the first year.
Other retailers are one step ahead of Walmart in employee pay. the goalFor example, in 2017 we announced a gradual increase in the minimum wage, reaching $15 an hour. July 2020Competing big-box players operating stores in high-cost cities like New York City and San Francisco will roll out its own debt-free college degree program in 2021.