Walmart, the nation's largest private employer, will lay off more than 2,000 employees in five states. The company notified the Worker Adjustment Retraining Notification (WARN), where businesses must register collective layoffs in advance. There, one can see which counties will be affected and the exact number of people to be laid off:
- 1,047 in Tarrant and 92 in Fort Bend, Texas.
- 547 in Northampton, Pennsylvania.
- 201 in Pedricktown, New Jersey.
There will be 400 more layoffs in Florida, according to CNN. According to media reports, these employees will be laid off from the warehouses that process online orders. The news comes in the same month that the company announced that it will permanently close all of its locations in Portland, Oregon, due to the economic downturn and crime.
"We recently adjusted staffing levels to better prepare for the future needs of customers," a company spokesperson told Reuters. According to the same source, employees will have 90 days to find employment in other locations of the company. So far the company has not confirmed whether these will be the last cuts.
Walmart's layoffs join a wave of similar announcements by other large companies. Among them is Meta, which has announced that it will cut 10,000 jobs in the future and leave 5,000 unfilled. The same is true for McDonald's, whose U.S. offices are closed for three days this week to "make key decisions related to roles and staffing levels."
