Walmart to close 269 stores, lay off 16000 employees

Walmart announced it’s closing 269 stores in the United States and across the globe on Friday, two of those stores are in Texoma.

The move represents a shift in focus for the world’s largest retailer by revenue, which plans to invest in its e-commerce business, raise wages for entry-level employees and expand in-store pickup for customers’ online orders, a service that launched in fall 2015 in the Nashville area.

The store closures are expected to affect about 10,000 U.S. Walmart workers.

“The stores will be closed to customers, but we will still have to work to remove all the merchandise and fixtures, and we expect that will be completed by February10”, company spokeswoman Delia Garcia said.

The stores will close January 28.

“Sadly, these latest store closings could very well be just the beginning”, Jess Levin, communications director at Making Change at Walmart, said in an emailed statement.

“Managing our portfolio is essential to maintaining a healthy business”, McMillon said. In 2010, Walmart promised Daley the company would create 10,000 jobs in Chicago and build dozens of stores.

“Juneau is in a unique circumstance in that there aren’t other Wal-Marts relatively close by as you might find in other locations that are being closed”, Garcia said.

The 11 stores shutting down in Arkansas, most in the western half of the state, are a Neighborhood Market in Maumelle and Wal-Mart Express locations in Charleston, Coal Hill, Damascus, Decatur, Gentry, Gravette, Mansfield, Mulberry, Prairie Grove and Van Buren.

“The decision to close stores is hard, and we are about the associates who will be impacted”, McMillon said. Our experience over the last three years operating our current stores in DC has given us a fuller view on building and operating stores in the District. Impacting 120 employees here in the four states.

The company said it would provide 60 days of pay if employees are unable to be transferred, and severance for those eligible. The retailer operates 580 stores in Texas, where it opened 53 stores a year ago.

About 16,000 to be affected worldwide – roughly 10,000 of whom are in the USA – according to the company.

The closings include 154 locations in the United States – 102 of which are the company’s smallest stores, called Walmart Express, which have been in pilot since 2011. The remaining 115 locations to close are spread over Latin America, mostly in Brazil. Web merchants are gobbling up a growing share of shopping dollars, their vast online catalogs rendering Wal-Mart’s sprawling superstores increasingly less relevant. Outside the U.S., Wal-Mart plans to open 200 to 240 stores. The company did not announce a list of prospective closures.