Walmart raises minimum wage as retail labor market remains tight

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’s roughly a quarter of Walmart’s 1.3 million workers who work in the field, driving trucks, packing up online purchases and serving in stores.

The retail giant, which is the country’s largest private employer with 1.6 million employees, is hiking pay as part of employees’ annual increases. It comes as retailers continue to grapple with a tight labor market, despite thousands of job cuts at prominent tech companies, banks and media organizations.

In the employee memo, Furner said the wage hike will be part of many employees’ annual increases. Some of those pay increases will also go toward store employees who work in parts of the country where the labor market is more competitive, the company said.

Walmart is sweetening other perks to attract and retain employees, too. Furner said the company is adding more college degrees and certificates to its Live Better U program, which covers tuition and fees for part- and full-time workers. It is also creating more high-paid roles at its auto care centers and recruiting employees to become truck drivers, a job that can pay up to $110,000 in the first year. 

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