With approximately 1.7 million US workers, Walmart is by far the country’s largest private employer. In fact, the company’s workforce dwarfs those of Yum Brands, McDonald’s, and IBM – numbers two, three and four on the list – combined. The company has characterized its commitment to hiring, promoting, and retaining diverse talent as “unwavering,” and its latest culture, diversity, equity, and inclusion report touts a number of short term successes in the U.S., including:
- A two percent rise in the number of female officers since 2020.
- Almost two percent more people of color in officer roles since 2020.
- Slightly more than three percent more African American and Black officers since 2020.
We thought we’d dive in further by briefly comparing our historical workforce data on Walmart, to the data the company disclosed at the end of FY 2022 in January. Here a few quick observations:
- Walmart’s workforce has been consistently dominated by women. In 2014, women made up 56.5 percent of the company’s total workforce, and today, that number remains high at 53.2 percent. Walmart also remains one of only five companies in the S&P 500’s consumer discretionary sector with a workforce dominated by women – the others being Estee Lauder (81.7%), Walgreens (71%), Kroger (50.9%) and General Mills (50%).
- But in the past eight years, Walmart has only marginally improved the representation of women on its executive team. In 2014, 30.9 percent of the company’s senior executives were women. Today, women make up 33.8 percent of the company’s executive ranks, a slight rise of 2.9 percent.
- Since 2014, Walmart has made slight gains in adding people of color to its executive ranks. In 2014, 22.2 percent of the company’s senior executives were people of color, while today that figure stands at 26.6 percent.
- Progress has also been made in adding people of color to the company’s managerial ranks. In 2014, only 29.4% of the company’s managers were people of color. Today, that figure stands at 38.5 percent, a cumulative rise of 9.1 percent.