Whether you consider Black Friday the greatest day of the year, or the seventh circle of hell, there’s no denying its power over the American economy. Roughly 155 million Americans took part in last year’s festivities, with the average shopper spending $430. The total bump in the economy – a whopping $9 billion.
With that in mind, break out your Black Friday stun guns, as we dive into workforce diversity data for the day’s three largest brick and mortar retailers – Walmart, Target, and Best Buy.
Which of these Black Friday retailers has the biggest workforce?
If you’re frantically rushing to find Lizzo’s latest drop, but it’s nowhere to be found, chances are Walmart will have someone to help you. As we’ve covered in previous newsletters, Walmart, with 1.67 million employees, is easily the country’s largest private employer. Target, with 425,000 employees, comes in a distant second, and trailing the pack is Best Buy, with approximately 116,000 employees.
Which of these Black Friday retailers has the most gender balanced U.S. workforce?
Women make up 27 percent of Best Buy’s total workforce, 31 percent of its managers, and 29 percent of its small (42-member) executive team. Next up is Walmart, where women make up 53.4 percent of the company’s workforce, 48 percent of the management team, and 33.5 percent of the company’s 489-member executive team are women.
That stat is eclipsed is eclipsed only by Minneapolis-based Target, where 56 percent of the workforce, 51 percent of the managers, and 49 percent of its 870-member executive team are women, respectively. Does Target win out here? As Fargo’s Marge Gunderson might say after seeing gender parity at the top levels of the company, “oh, you betcha, yeah!”
Which of these Black Friday retailers has the most ethnically diverse workforce?
Forty nine percent of Walmart’s U.S. workers identify as a person of color. Slightly higher is Best Buy, where 51 percent of the workforce identifies as such, and Target, where 52 percent do. Things change significantly for all at the management and executive levels, as shown in the infographic below.
