Every major company in the world is laying off its employees right now and the situation has become so common that we don’t even have any surprise at the announcement of layoffs of 1000s of its employees anymore. Just recently, E-commerce Giant Amazon also announced that they are laying off another 9000 employees because of the economic situation right now and they say that this will be the case for the next few years as well. Facebook also said this earlier about the economic situation and mentioned that they see this being the same for the next few years.
Now, another e-commerce giant in the US is laying off its employees but this time, the company has not announced it officially and there is no need for them to do so as well. We are talking about Walmart who are known to be laying off hundreds of employees from its various e-commerce fulfillment centers in the US. A spokesperson at Walmart said that hundreds of their employees were told to get another job because of reduction in morning and evening shifts at the company.
Amid economists already saying that this could be the year when the US economy enters into a recession, this could one of the final nails in the coffin because we know that the impact Walmart has on the US economy is huge. Walmart said in a statement that they will help the laid off workers find jobs at other locations and added that “We recently adjusted staffing levels to better prepare for the future needs of customers,”
Apart from the economy, it looks like many workers in the e-commerce and fulfillment centers will also be losing their jobs to automation because it is a technology where you need to invest only once and reap the rewards for years to come. Walmart is already working with a company called Knapp where it has reduced the number of steps needed for its workers to process e-commerce orders from 12 to just 5 with the potential to optimize even more in other areas. Walmart plans to spend more on automation technology from its $15 billion capital expenditure this year.
