Donna Morris says Walmart is betting on people and technology. The numbers suggest there is substance behind the message — but they also reveal how dramatically the nature of retail work is changing.
The debate over artificial intelligence and employment has become one of the biggest questions facing the retail industry. Will AI eliminate jobs, or will it create new opportunities for workers willing to acquire new skills?
For Walmart, the answer is increasingly clear: the future will be built around people working alongside technology.
In Walmart’s latest 2026 Jobs Spotlight Report, Donna Morris, Chief People Officer, argues that it is still too early to predict the full employment impact of AI. Rather than presenting technology as a replacement for employees, Walmart is positioning it as a tool that can help associates move into new and more valuable roles.
There is evidence behind that argument.
Walmart says it has already achieved its target of helping 100,000 U.S. associates move into in-demand roles, a goal originally announced in 2024 and scheduled to take three years. More than half of those associates reached the new roles through promotions. Walmart now expects to reach 200,000 in-demand roles filled by the end of the original three-year period.
But there is an important distinction.
Two hundred thousand roles filled is not the same as 200,000 new jobs created.
The Walmart figures largely describe career mobility — employees moving into different or more advanced positions — rather than the retailer creating 200,000 additional positions. That distinction matters when assessing the company’s claim that technology is creating opportunity.
The numbers behind Walmart’s jobs strategy
Walmart currently employs approximately 2.1 million people worldwide, including about 1.6 million in the United States. It remains one of the world’s largest private-sector employers.
Its internal promotion figures are particularly significant.
According to Walmart’s FY2026 workforce information, 86.4% of U.S. roles above entry level were filled internally, while more than 160,000 U.S. associates received promotions during the financial year. Around 75% of salaried U.S. store, club and supply-chain leaders started their careers as hourly associates.
Those figures give credibility to Morris’s argument that Walmart is attempting to build career pathways rather than simply recruiting workers for individual jobs.
The company has also invested $1 billion in career-driven training since 2021. Its training and education programmes include Walmart Academy and Live Better U, alongside programmes designed to move frontline employees into areas such as driving, technical services, healthcare and technology.
AI changes the question
The more interesting issue is what happens to traditional retail jobs as AI and automation become increasingly embedded in Walmart’s operations.
Walmart describes itself as a “people-led, tech-powered” retailer. That is more than a corporate slogan. The company is redesigning work around AI, automation and omnichannel retail, while simultaneously attempting to retrain employees for emerging roles.
This could eventually change the composition of Walmart’s workforce even if the overall number of employees remains enormous.
Some repetitive tasks may become automated. Other jobs may require employees to use AI tools rather than perform processes manually. At the same time, demand can grow for data engineers, technicians, healthcare workers, supply-chain specialists and other skilled positions.
Walmart’s own 2026 report provides an example. It highlights data engineers as a growing career path supporting the infrastructure behind the company’s technology and AI capabilities. The company lists a base salary range of $90,000 to $234,000 for data engineers entering Walmart, before bonus and stock awards.
This illustrates the central transformation taking place in retail: the supermarket of the future may employ fewer people performing repetitive tasks while requiring more people with technical, analytical and specialist skills.
Is Walmart’s message credible?
On the evidence currently available, yes — but with an important qualification.
Walmart can legitimately point to substantial internal mobility. Its promotion figures, internal hiring rate, training investment and 100,000-role achievement are measurable indicators that the company is providing pathways for employees to move into different careers.
There is also evidence that Walmart is creating new training routes specifically for changing retail requirements. In June, the company launched an Associate to Optician pathway and announced a significant increase in the pay range for its General Maintenance Technicians, from $19–$35 to $26–$51 an hour.
But Morris is also right to avoid making definitive predictions about AI.
It is simply too early to know the ultimate effect of artificial intelligence on employment at Walmart and across retail.
The real test will not be how many employees Walmart says it has moved into new roles. It will be whether workers whose traditional jobs are changed or eliminated by automation can genuinely move into the new opportunities being created.
That is a much harder test.
From jobs to careers
There is perhaps a deeper message in Walmart’s report.
For decades, retail employment was often viewed primarily as an entry point into the workforce. Walmart is now attempting to present retail as a career ecosystem in which an employee can start in a frontline role and potentially progress into management, technology, healthcare, supply chain or skilled technical work.
The company’s own statistics support part of that argument. Approximately 75% of salaried U.S. store, club and supply-chain leaders began as hourly associates. Walmart also says that associates who complete a no-cost Live Better U education programme are three times more likely to be promoted and three times more likely to remain with the company.
That suggests the future of retail employment may depend less on protecting every existing job and more on giving workers the ability to move as the jobs themselves change.
The Walmart experiment
Donna Morris’s message therefore deserves to be taken seriously, but not accepted uncritically.
Walmart is not proving that AI will create more jobs than it destroys. Nobody can yet prove that.
What Walmart is demonstrating is something different: a major retailer can use technology while simultaneously investing heavily in internal mobility, training and new career pathways.
The company’s 100,000-role achievement is real. The planned 200,000 figure is ambitious. Its promotion and internal hiring numbers are significant.
But the ultimate measure of success will be whether an associate whose job is transformed by AI has a realistic route to a better one.
That may be the real future of Walmart jobs.
As Sam Walton famously said: “To succeed in this world, you have to change all the time.”
For Walmart’s 2.1 million associates, the next change could be the biggest yet.