To lure workers Walmart, Target Corp. , Costco Wholesale Corp. , Amazon.com Inc. and others are raising wages, and in some cases, offering new perks.
Walmart last summer changed its employee education support program to fully cover tuition and books at some colleges, a move the company said helped increase the number of employees using the benefit by 44%.
In September it raised minimum starting wages to $12 per hour and now says starting wages have gone up to $30 in some regions for some roles. Its average wage is around $16.40. Walmart also reduced the time it takes an hourly worker to be hired to about 24 hours, down from a few weeks, an increasingly common focus for employers hiring large numbers of workers. It also started offering telehealth medical and mental-health services to employees free.
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Target said last month that it wants to be “a wage leader in every market where it operates,” including raising starting wages to between $15 and $24 per hour.
Amazon, which has added workers at a rapid pace during the pandemic, aimed to hire 150,000 employees last quarter during the holiday shopping season and actually hired about 140,000 workers, Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky said on an earnings conference call last month. The company sees its labor challenges diminishing as the new year starts, he said. Amazon, which has around 1.6 million global employees, has boosted its starting pay for workers to an average of $18 an hour and offered sign-on bonuses of as much as $3,000 in some areas.
Those enhanced perks aren’t denting profits at large retailers, which have mostly fared well during the pandemic, enjoying large sales boosts as shoppers continue to spend heavily on household goods. In some cases companies are offsetting labor costs by ending other perks. Walmart stopped offering a quarterly bonus after raising wages last year and earlier this year said it would end its Covid-19 paid sick-leave benefit.
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