PwC says AI skills are reshaping Walmart jobs and pay

AI-skill job postings topped 1 million in the U.S. in 2025, and PwC says those workers now command a 62% wage premium. For Walmart’s roughly 1.6 million employees worldwide, that means the company’s next round of job change is less about replacing people than redrawing which tasks get assisted by software and which ones still pay for human judgment.

PwC’s 2026 Global AI Jobs Barometer, built on more than one billion job ads across six continents, says AI is splitting labor markets into two tracks. In the U.S., postings requiring AI skills rose by about 472,000 in 2025 from 2024, a 66% jump, while AI-exposed entry-level jobs grew 35% since 2019 as other entry-level roles fell 10%. The report also says professionalised roles are growing twice as fast as democratised ones and posting 42% higher wage growth, a warning sign for retail workers whose work has long been defined by repetition rather than problem-solving.

At Walmart, the split already has a real-world shape. The company said last June that it was rolling out AI-powered tools across its U.S. associate base, including real-time translation and task management software that cut shift-planning time from 90 minutes to 30. That points to the jobs most likely to be standardized or reduced first: routine scheduling, simple task assignment and other back-office coordination work that can be handled faster by a system. The work most likely to hold value is the work the system cannot do well, including coaching, customer recovery, face-to-face communication and judgment when a store is short-staffed or a supply chain problem lands on the floor.

Walmart has also started putting a training answer behind that shift. In September 2025, the company said U.S. front-line and office-based associates would get free OpenAI training and certifications beginning in 2026 through Walmart Academy, part of nearly $1 billion in skills training through 2026. At Associates Week in Bentonville, Arkansas, Walmart leaders again argued that AI would improve jobs rather than replace workers, while emphasizing responsible use and human judgment.

That is the clearest map of where Walmart’s labor strategy is headed: store associates, department managers, supply-chain teams and office staff will not be rewarded for doing the same task faster, but for using AI tools, adapting quickly and taking on higher-value work that still needs a person in the room.