Walmart to employ 150,000 new workers as Coronavirus fuels panic buying

As
Coronavirus continues to drive panic buying with people running to the nationwide
retail stores to stock essential items in fears of shortage, Walmart Inc.
(NYSE:WMT) announced its plan of hiring 150,000 new workers (hourly) on
Thursday to cope up with the sharply rising traffic at its stores.

Walmart’s
online rival, Amazon had also made a similar announcement earlier this week
that declared that the online retail giant wishes to hire 100,000 workers for
its U.S based warehouses and delivery operations as online orders continue to
surge exponentially amidst the health emergency.

Walmart
Attracts New Workers With Special Cash Bonuses

In
its announcement on Thursday, the largest U.S retailer also attracted new
workers with a promise of £250 cash bonus for full-time hourly workers and a
smaller £125 bonus for the part-time associates.

Walmart
is to continue hiring until the end of May. Its new 150,000 hires, as per the
American multinational retail corporation, will be appointed at the company’s
distribution and fulfillment centers, clubs, and stores across the U.S. While
the new workers will be brought on board as temporary hires, many of them can
expect a permanent position at Walmart at a later stage.

Walmart’s
Chief Executive Officer, Doug McMillon, appreciated the company’s workers on
Thursday and stated:

“Walmart
associates have gone above and beyond the call of duty in serving our customers
during these unprecedented times.”

Walmart
also expressed confidence in its new hiring process that it wishes to implement
to recruit the 150,000 new workers. The process, according to the company, will
dramatically expedite recruitment especially for the key positions like
stockers and cashiers. As a rough estimate, Walmart said that an application
that currently takes two weeks to be processed will now be evaluated within
24-hours.

Walmart’s
Performance In The Stock Market

Despite
the surge in traffic, the Coronavirus
pandemic is weighing heavily on Walmart in the stock market. Share prices tanked
5% on Thursday and were reported at £100.27 in extended trading. On a year to
date basis, however, Walmart’s performance in 2020 remains flat so far.

Its
performance in 2020, on the contrary, was reported fairly upbeat with an annual
gain of just over 25%. Walmart opened at around £78.56 per share in January
2019 but closed the year significantly higher at around £99.67. Walmart
currently has a market cap of £286.27 billion with a price to earnings ratio of
23.02.