America’s biggest retailer will lay off or relocate some 1,000 corporate employees as it seeks to streamline its operations, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The layoffs will impact Walmart’s global technology and product teams, according to an internal memo sent Tuesday.
The decision is meant to “simplify how the work is organized, make ownership clearer, and better align roles to the work and skills we need going forward,” Daniel Danker, global AI acceleration boss, and Suresh Kumar, global chief technology and development officer, wrote in the memo.
Walmart’s latest cuts come around a year after it laid off 1,500 corporate employees for similar reasons.
The decision is not related to AI automation, a company source told Business Insider.
As for what percentage of the company’s corporate workforce was laid off, a source familiar with the situation said that Walmart does not provide that level of detail.
The layoffs drew spirited responses in Reddit’s Walmart subreddit, with many users saying they or someone they knew were impacted.
“A friend I know got laid off in Product,” user Direct_Daikon_8141 wrote. “She gave many sleepless nights for Walmart and yes it was a good run for a while but in the end, you can put your life to companies and it won't care for your life in return.”
“Layoff a few executives and cut their golden parachutes so we can get some hours back on our schedules,” wrote user jwriddle, who claims to be a customer service associate at the company.
Though the latest round of layoffs aren’t related to AI, the emerging technology will eventually impact every one of the company’s 1.6 million U.S. workers, CEO Doug McMillon said in November.
White-collar jobs aren’t the only positions that will change – AI developments could impact blue-collar tasks like gathering shopping carts in the parking lot, the CEO said.
Walmart’s corporate layoffs are the latest in the brick-and-mortar and e-commerce retail world, where companies are navigating AI’s growth and its impact on white-collar positions.
Amazon announced in January plans to lay off 16,000 corporate jobs several months after CEO Andy Jassy said the company planned to “reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company.”
Other retailers that laid off workers this year include makeup brand Estée Lauder (10,000 in May), Nike (2,175 across layoffs in January and April), Saks Global (600 in May) and Lowe’s (600 in February), the Wall Street Journal reported.
Layoffs are impacting companies beyond retail, as well. In 2026 alone, Oracle announced layoffs of up to 30,000 U.S.-based and international employees. Facebook said in April it planned to lay off 10 percent of its workforce – some 8,000 employees – by May 20.
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