We’re off for Presidents Day, but we wanted to reshare this episode.Walmart is offering higher pay, bonuses and more stock options this year to retain and attract managers. WSJ’s Sarah Nassauer spent a day with one manager, Nichole Hart, to understand why the job is commanding such a high salary these days, and why Hart logs about 20,000 steps a day.This episode was originally published in May 2024. Further Reading: -A Day in the Life of a Walmart Manager Who Makes $240,000 a Year -Walmart Takes On Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods With New Premium Brand Further Listening: -What Walmart’s Aisles Say About the American Consumer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Full Episode
Hey, it's Kate. We're off for President's Day, but we wanted to share an episode we made last year about U.S. retail giant Walmart. In this episode, we look at how Walmart compensates some of its store managers with bonuses, stock options, and huge six-figure salaries. We followed one manager to see why the job demands such high pay and perks.
It's about 7 in the morning at a Walmart outside of Waco, Texas, and Nicole Hart is getting the download from her night manager.
Good morning, everybody. Good morning. How's everybody doing? Great.
The night manager told her that some people didn't show up for their shifts overnight, and the letter T on the Walmart sign outside is burnt out. Those are things that Nicole would have to deal with that day. But first, she takes a lap around the store.
Yeah, because I do this every single day. This is my morning. Every morning, we walk a new tour. So there's things that I already, I mean, we walk by granola bars on the cereal aisle. I already know they're coming in on the 25th.
On this day, Nicole had an addition to her morning routine. Our colleague, Sarah Nossauer. Sarah was going to follow Nicole around to try to understand her job. Sarah became interested in managers like Nicole when she saw a press release Walmart published about raising their pay. What stood out to you in that release?
Well, my first thought is, why do they feel the need to do this? Is turnover going up? Do they feel they're losing some of their better store managers to other big box stores? The competition for those folks is really, really, really high across retail.
Walmart has a manager for each of its 4,600 US stores, and some of them can now make more than $400,000 a year because the company is offering them bigger bonuses, higher salaries, and stock options.
It almost can't be understated how important a store manager is to Walmart. They are the ones who have the most control over the sales and profit of that box, of that store, and those stores are the most important financial entity in the whole company.
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