Sarah Nassauer

If you look at reputational data and the firms that track that stuff, their reputation is a little bit better, right?

It's not like everyone thinks Walmart is a great employer or everyone thinks they pay enough.

They get a lot of flack for having a large percentage, a number of workers that are in government subsidies like SNAP, right?

They're also the country's largest employer, so they're gonna have a lot of employees in general.

but they have moved the needle.

a lot more than they had before, right, on how people feel about them.

They do say that their turnover, like their worker turnover, is down from where it was 10 years ago.

So they feel that they're, you know, getting employees to stick around longer, see them as a better place to work, and that more shoppers feel like it's a place that's for them.

know it's symbolic right it it shows that they have figured out how to get investors to buy into what they're capable of and that its sales are strong and have been strong for a while and now we're in a cycle where walmart's known for low prices and people are looking for low prices and so i think investors currently are keyed into which retailers are benefiting from some of that and navigating that well

One of the things I've found interesting covering you for a long time is you have been CEO of Walmart at a time when we've seen demographically

a long-term trend continued towards the loss of the middle class in the U.S.

How did you think about that when you were CEO?

The federal minimum wage.

Yes.

Walmart has supported a higher federal minimum wage for a long time.

That's not new.

And there are a variety of reasons.

We have to remember the federal minimum wage is $7.25.

It's much lower than almost anyone pays, right?

Especially, you know, like a large national public company.