Walmart US Chief Pledges To Keep Headcount Steady As AI Creates New Roles

The head of Walmart's U.S. business on Tuesday said that the country's largest private employer will keep U.S. headcount steady in the coming years, adding that artificial intelligence is creating new roles in the place of jobs that are being eliminated.

"When we look out two years, three years, five years, where I think we'll be is we'll have roughly the same number of people we have today," Walmart U.S. CEO John Furner said in an event hosted by business publication Fortune on Tuesday.

The comments are reassuring amid clear signs that AI is claiming jobs. More organizational tasks are now handled by computers, allowing companies to eliminate certain roles and accomplish projects with fewer workers.

To be sure, Walmart, which employs 1.6 million workers in the U.S., has had restrenchments. It announced cutting 1,500 jobs in May, mostly affecting its tech, advertising, and U.S. e-commerce fulfillment teams.

That said, Walmart is on solid footing for now, offering some respite. Last year, the company's U.S. revenue increased by 4.7%, and it now expects a similar growth rate for the current fiscal year.

Furner discussed how Walmart utilizes AI agents to assist its merchants with inventory and curation, as well as to help store workers efficiently manage their daily tasks.

He also shared an example of new roles being created, saying how a general manager in Brooksville, Florida, started out loading trucks two decades ago and now leads a team of robot technology that includes circuit boards and changing batteries.

On Stocktwits, the retail sentiment for Walmart held in the ‘bearish’ zone as of early Wednesday, unchanged from a week ago. WMT stock is up 13.7% year-to-date. 

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