Want to know when you can be sure the economy is in the turlet? Itâs when even Walmartâs not hiring.
According to this item, the company has hired essentially nobody for the last six years. Nobody says itâs since the bankers ripped us off again and the government let them, and all the oceans stopped rising, but thatâs where six years back brings us.
Walmart still has 1.4 million employees, and only 20,000 fewer than 2008 â thatâs a less than 1.5% cut, over six years. Itâs not âessentially nobodyâ â itâs ânegative nobodyâ if you will.
But surely for Bentonville itâs a rounding error. They lose more employees than that in the cushions of their corporate couches, Iâm sure.
Still, with 650 more stores in that same period, itâs an average of 60 fewer âassociatesâ per location.
Other factors matter: Walmartâs opening smaller stores, focusing on grocery, expanding their online sales â so when you go to pick up the item, youâre âstocking the shelvesâ so to speak.
Not only that, but 60 per location means maybe 1200 hours a week of labor ⊠160 hours a day. Surely it saved the company $2000 a day per store not to have those 160 hours worked. And again, to go from 394 to 333 per store, weâre not talking about a ton of people.
In other words, they may not need more employees, but fewer shelves.
[And there may be other issues thornier to admit than even a tanking economy.]
Finally, there are two kinds of Walmart fairies: one is the shelf stocker, who magically makes product appear. But there are too few of them to do it properly, and thatâs costing Walmart $3 billion. Â
Thatâs what the second kind of fairy calls âan opportunity.â
The second kind if the corporate shill and apologist, who treats the company not hiring people as an odd cosmic inevitability.
Wasnât it an opportunity six years ago?
Or five or four or three or two or one ⊠?
How about next year, when itâs unchanged?