Home Depot cuts 800 corporate jobs, orders full-time office return

Home Depot cut about 800 corporate jobs and told remaining white-collar employees to return to the office five days a week starting the week of April 6, 2026. The move hit the company’s Atlanta store support center in Vinings, Georgia, and signaled a sharper push to centralize control, trim overhead and make corporate work more visible.

Fewer than 150 of the eliminated roles were at the Atlanta headquarters, with the rest tied to remote workers. The layoffs fell mainly on the technology organization and other corporate teams, a shift that matters far beyond the office campus because those groups sit behind store systems, process changes and the tools associates use every day. Home Depot said the changes were meant to simplify corporate operations and drive greater agility.

The five-day mandate was a step beyond the company’s earlier return-to-office policy. In June 2025, some white-collar employees in certain departments had already been required to come in four days a week. By January 28, 2026, Home Depot had pushed that expectation further, underscoring that the company was not just reducing headcount but also tightening how work gets managed and who is expected to be on site.

For store managers, department leads and associates, the practical questions are straightforward. Corporate cuts can ripple into slower approvals, shifting procedures, new points of contact and more churn when technology or support teams are reorganized. If headquarters is trying to operate with fewer people and more in-person oversight, stores may get clearer direction on some projects. They may also see more pressure from top-down decisions that leave less room for flexibility at the field level.

The scale of the company makes those changes hard to ignore. Ted Decker, Home Depot’s chair, president and chief executive, leads a retailer with more than 2,350 stores and approximately 475,000 associates. At that size, a restructuring in Atlanta does not stay in Atlanta for long. It can shape how quickly a pro desk gets help, how smoothly a seasonal reset lands on the sales floor and how much corporate support reaches the store when demand spikes.