Walmart cutting or relocating about 1,000 corporate jobs

Walmart is cutting or relocating jobs as the world’s largest retailer undertakes an effort to simplify its operating structure.

The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday reported that Walmart is laying off or relocating roughly 1,000 corporate workers, according to people familiar with the situation.

“We’ve made changes to simplify how the work is organized, make ownership clearer, and better align roles to the work and skills we need going forward,” Walmart head of global technology Suresh Kumar and head of global AI acceleration Daniel Danker said in a memo to employees reviewed by FOX Business.

Kumar and Danker said in the memo that the company is shifting from organizing separately for Walmart U.S., Sam’s Clubs and its international markets to building its strategy on a unified, shared platform.

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The executives said that in some cases they’ve had “different teams working on similar problems,” and that staff who’ve been affected by the changes are able to apply for open roles within the company.

According to a Wall Street Journal report, many of the affected staff have been asked to relocate to Walmart’s Bentonville, Arkansas, or Northern California offices.

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The company has regularly pared back some of its corporate staff in recent years, consolidating business units and centralizing operations at some of its regional hubs and its headquarters in Arkansas.

Walmart’s new CEO, John Furner, is pursuing a tech-focused strategy to attract more higher-income shoppers and also build its marketplace and delivery businesses.

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The company is the largest private employer in the U.S. with about 1.6 million employees, of whom about 92% are hourly workers. It has about 2.1 million workers worldwide, according to a filing as of Jan. 31.

Walmart became the first retailer to ever reach $1 trillion in market value in February and has been focusing on a digital transformation to better compete with rivals like Amazon and Costco. 

Reuters contributed to this report.