Bentonville, Ark. (Reuters) – Walmart (NYSE:WMT) announced on Thursday that it will open four new fulfilment centres in the U.S. over the next two years. This will create 4,000 new jobs and make it easier for workers to do their jobs.
Companies are making these changes because it is hard for them to find and keep workers in a tight labour market. The biggest store in the country also wants to expand an education and training programme that it started for U.S. workers in 2016 to all of its workers around the world.
The new centres will be in Joliet, Illinois, McCordsville, Indiana, Lancaster, Texas, and Greencastle, Pennsylvania. The company’s officials say that 75 percent of the U.S. population could get deliveries the next day or within two days.
After an annual meeting in Bentonville, Arkansas, executives in the supply chain told the media that orders could be filled in stores and at existing distribution centres to reach 95 percent of the population.
The new jobs are in addition to the 20,000 supply chain jobs the store said it would hire last year. The company said that the new hires will earn an hourly wage ranging from $16 to $28.
The new facilities were designed by the automation company Knapp. They will reduce the number of steps needed to process orders from 12 to 5, double the amount of storage space, and be able to handle twice as many customer orders every day.
At least 1,000 people will work in each building, which is more than a million square feet (92,900 square metres).
The company, which has 2.3 million employees, said it would test a new programme this summer to help recent college graduates and students who will graduate in the next year get their careers off to a good start.
At Wednesday’s annual general meeting, CEO Doug McMillon said, “Our goal is to turn even more jobs into careers by giving our employees more ways to move up the ladder.”
The programme, called College2Career, is for new store, club, and supply chain managers in the United States. The company thinks that more than 1,200 of them will take part.
It also said that the top performers could be offered a new management job called “emerging coach,” which would pay at least $65,000 a year to start.
The company said that the job is a fast way for people with a lot of potential to become store managers, who made an average of about $210,000 in 2021.
It has more than 5,000 stores in the United States that make an average of $100 million in sales each year.
McMillon also said that the average hourly wage at its stores, clubs, and supply chain in the U.S. is now over $17, up from $16.40.
