Walmart lays off 2,000 warehouse workers

New York CNN

Walmart has laid off over 2,000 employees at five US warehouses which fulfill orders from its website, just weeks after the country's largest employer warned of a difficult year to come.

According to Worker Retraining Notifications (WARN), the retail giant has cut more than 1,000 positions in Texas, 600 in Pennsylvania, 400 jobs in Florida, and 200 in New Jersey. Reuters reported first last month that job cuts were due to reductions and eliminations of evening and weekend hours.

Walmart did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for a comment. There's no way to know if this is the end or just the beginning of layoffs at large companies.

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Walmart warned investors in its most recent earnings to expect slower growth of sales and profits. Walmart announced recently that it would raise the average minimum wage for its employees from $12 an hour to $14 per hour in order to keep them on board during a labor shortage.

This will have an impact on profit and squeeze margins, while its lower income shoppers are still being hit by inflation. Sales could be affected this year.

Walmart CFO John Rainey said to CNBC that the consumer was still under a lot of pressure. If you look at the economic indicators, it is clear that balance sheets are thinner than they were in previous periods. Saving rates are also declining. We are therefore cautious about the remainder of the year.

Walmart hasn't experienced mass layoffs as its e-commerce competitor Amazon. Since the start of the year, the online retailer has cut 30,000 jobs across various divisions.

Amazon's latest layoffs (AMZN), which come on the heels of a recent spate of job losses in the tech industry, are a result of the sector being thrown into a tizzy by the demand for digital products and services resulting from a pandemic and the broader macroeconomic uncertainties.