Fueled by a surge in e-commerce spending and the approaching holiday season, Walmart is looking to hire workers for its Walmart and Sam’s Club distribution centers in Southern California.
The local hires are part of the mega retailer’s push to bring on 20,000 people nationwide as order fillers, freight handlers, lift drivers, technicians and managers to handle the increased workload at its 250 distribution facilities.
Walmart didn’t say how many people it plans to hire locally, but that number is likely in the hundreds. The hiring reflects a sharp uptick in the company’s e-commerce sales, which rose 103% over the past two years.
U.S. online spending totaled $861.12 billion in 2020 and represented 21.3% of total retail sales, according to Digital Commerce 360 estimates. That’s the highest annual growth in at least two decades and nearly triple the 15.1% jump in 2019.
“As our business continues evolving to meet the needs of today’s customers, having a robust supply chain is more important than ever,” Joe Metzger, Walmart’s executive vice president of supply chain operations wrote, in announcing the hiring move.
The full- and part-time positions will be permanent, and the average wage for supply chain workers is $20.37 an hour. Medical coverage starts at $30.50 per pay period, Walmart said, and supply chain workers who get a COVID-19 vaccination will receive a $150 bonus.
Walmart will hold hiring events from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 8 and Thursday, Sept. 9 at the following locations:
— 6750 Kimball Ave., Chino
— 1600 Agua Mansa Road, Colton
— 2356 Fleetwood Dr., Riverside
— 1001 Columbia Ave., Riverside
— 4250 Hamner Road, Eastvale
— 13550 Valley Blvd. Suite B, Fontana
— 21101 Johnson Road, Apple Valley
— 22722 Harley Knox Road, Perris
Applicants can also apply online at careers.walmart.com.
Walmart has increasingly harnessed automation to keep pace with the ongoing surge in e-commerce.
Since 2017, the retailer has worked closely with a manufacturer called Symbotic, using its technology to sort, store, retrieve and pack freight onto pallets. The system was first employed at Walmart’s 340,000-square-foot consolidation center in Colton.
The technology has allowed Walmart and Sam’s Club to get products onto shelves faster, while freeing up store employees to spend more time with customers.
The automated technology is particularly useful at Walmart’s grocery distribution centers, where a crate of watermelon could inadvertently be placed atop a pallet of strawberries, for example.
Shayne Wahlmeier, one of the engineers on the project, explains:
“A computer algorithm shows all the cases ordered for a given store and determines how to palletize them to maximize the space on a pallet or trailer,” he said. “It also takes into account density — what’s crushable and what’s not.”
Walmart recently opened six Walmart Academies to support its supply-chain business. The academies immerse employees in a program with classroom training and on-site experience in the company’s distribution and fulfillment centers.
The program is designed to fast-track workers into leadership positions. In fiscal 2021, the academies trained an estimated 5,900 employees through in-person and virtual sessions