Walmart U.S. CEO expects workforce size to hold steady over next 5 years

Fortune

Walmart U.S. President and CEO John Furner told Fortune Brainstorm Tech predicted that while employee tasks will change thanks to AI, he anticipates his workforce size will stay steady over the next few years.

Transcript

00:00Where I think we'll be is we'll have roughly about the same number of people we have today

00:04and we'll have a larger business. And so the business we think can continue to grow. It's

00:09a large economy. Fortunately, for the last several years, we've been gaining share.

00:13We're really focused on core retail. And specifically within jobs, there will be

00:18jobs that are created in the next 12, 18, 24 months that we don't have today. And that's

00:22been going on for decades. That will continue. The work will shift. What we're trying to do,

00:27and I think we're very confident we can do, is get people's time focused back on the items and

00:33the issues that are the highest value add for them and the things that are more repetitive or

00:38redundant might be another word. Let technology enable them so that they can be even more productive

00:43and we can serve more customers effectively. So five years from now, Walmart has fewer employees

00:50than it does today. I'm sorry. I know you don't want to envision that, but did that mean something

00:55went very right or very wrong? Yeah, I think it won't. I don't think we see a path of being

01:01lower than what it is today. I think it's just the work is going to change. The last few quarters,

01:08this last we were up just under 5%. And on a scale, adding 5%, 4% a year, we end up adding a lot of

01:15business each year. And so if you just think about outward from the out years, getting people in the

01:21position where they can do more enables them to take on different kinds of work.

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