Walmart lays off hundreds, moves remote staff to Bentonville, Hoboken, Bay Area

Walmart said it would lay off or relocate several hundred corporate employees and require many remote staff to move to company hubs in Bentonville, Arkansas; Hoboken, New Jersey; and the San Francisco Bay Area. A Walmart spokesperson, Nick DeMoss, provided site counts that the company said include “481 in Hoboken, 267 in Charlotte, and 79 in San Bruno, California,” figures that add up to 827 and that the company summarized as affecting “more than 800 corporate employees.”

A Feb. 4 memo from Chief People Officer Donna Morris framed the changes as an effort to increase in-person collaboration, saying Walmart is “bringing more of us together more often.” The memo added that being together in person “makes us better and helps us to collaborate, innovate and move even faster.” The memo also noted that “some parts of our business have made changes” that will result in job losses, without offering a more detailed business justification.

The reorganization affects a mix of smaller regional offices and remote roles. Walmart told personnel in Dallas, Atlanta and Toronto that they must relocate to one of the larger hubs. The company said it was closing the Charlotte office and that Hoboken and San Bruno would remain open but at a smaller scale. Employees who relocate to the hubs will be eligible for hybrid schedules, the company indicated, but the firm has not yet said how many people will accept relocation offers.

WARN notices tied to the changes set a June 13 deadline for employees to make decisions. Walmart also said it did not yet know how many workers will choose to relocate. The company has not provided a comprehensive nationwide total that breaks down which job changes are permanent eliminations and which are relocations, and it did not immediately respond to additional questions about the consolidation.

The moves come as Walmart continues to expand its Bentonville campus. Company plans call for a nearly 350-acre site with 12 office buildings, parking, a hotel and amenities; several initial buildings, including a fitness center and a day care, have already opened. Walmart also began bringing corporate employees back to its Bentonville headquarters in February 2022 as part of an ongoing return-to-office push.

For workers, the immediate impacts are concrete: relocation choices, potential job loss for those who do not move, and the closing of local office capacity in places such as Charlotte. For the company, concentrating staff in major hubs aims to speed collaboration but will reshape staffing costs and local labor markets. Employees facing decisions have until the WARN deadline to respond, and the next reporting steps will be to track how many accept relocation offers, what severance or relocation assistance is provided, and how the shifts affect operations in the affected cities.