Morrisons has cut almost 5,000 jobs over the past year as the supermarket continues a major programme of restructuring, cost reduction and automation.
The scale of the reduction was revealed in the retailer’s latest accounts, which show that average employee numbers fell from 101,144 to 96,232 during the year to October 2025 — a reduction of 4,912 people. More than 4,200 of the jobs lost were in stores, with further reductions in manufacturing and distribution.
Morrisons has stressed that the figures should not be interpreted as a single large redundancy programme.
The retailer said the reduction in store numbers was primarily linked to the closure of its newspaper home-delivery service in convenience, restructuring within its retail people team and the downsizing of the Rathbones bakery business.
It also said that store numbers were reduced largely because employees who left voluntarily were not replaced, rather than through an additional store redundancy programme.
But the pressure on employment has continued into 2026.
Head office comes under pressure
In April, Morrisons announced that around 200 jobs at its Bradford head office were at risk as part of another restructuring programme.
The company said it was changing the way its central functions operate, with plans to simplify structures, streamline processes, automate manual tasks and make greater use of data and artificial intelligence.
The move reflects a broader change taking place across supermarket groups as retailers attempt to reduce administrative costs while investing more heavily in technology.
For Morrisons, however, the restructuring comes as the company faces intense competition from both traditional supermarket rivals and the rapidly expanding discount chains.
Convenience business also affected
Further changes were announced in March, when Morrisons began restructuring its convenience and general merchandise operations.
Around 100 head-office positions were reported to be at risk as the retailer moved to combine its Morrisons Daily commercial and support functions with its supermarket trading operation.
The convenience buying team was effectively being absorbed into a central buying structure, while general merchandise support functions were being moved from Bradford to a new office in Warrington.
Morrisons said the changes were intended to remove duplication, simplify operations and create a more integrated multichannel business.
The retailer also stressed that there would be no direct impact on Morrisons Daily stores from that particular restructuring.
Store closures add to the pressure
Morrisons has also been dealing with a difficult convenience estate.
In May, the supermarket announced plans to close around 100 loss-making Morrisons Daily stores, most of them former McColl’s locations acquired in 2022.
The closures were expected to put hundreds of jobs at risk, although Morrisons said it would try to redeploy affected employees elsewhere in the business where possible.
The company argued that the stores had struggled for years and that closing the weakest locations, while continuing to open new franchise stores, would strengthen its overall convenience operation.
That creates an interesting contrast in Morrisons’ strategy: reducing parts of the existing estate while continuing to expand through new convenience franchises.
AI and automation become part of the turnaround
The most significant aspect of the restructuring may be the increasing role of technology.
Morrisons has said its long-term programme is designed to automate manual tasks and make better use of data and AI.
That does not mean every job being removed is directly being replaced by an AI system. Many of the reductions are connected to organisational changes, store closures, businesses being downsized and vacancies not being refilled.
Nevertheless, the direction is clear.
Supermarkets are increasingly looking at technology not only to improve the customer experience but also to reduce the amount of manual administration required behind the scenes.
Morrisons’ restructuring therefore forms part of a much wider transformation taking place across grocery retail.
A business still investing
Despite the job reductions, Morrisons is not simply shrinking.
Its June trading update showed like-for-like sales up 2.2%, with total sales increasing 1.7% to £4 billion for the quarter. The company also reported further progress online and continued expansion of Morrisons Daily franchises.
Morrisons said it had delivered another £48 million of cost savings during the quarter, taking cumulative savings since the beginning of its programme to £942 million.
The figures illustrate the difficult balance facing the retailer.
Morrisons is attempting to improve sales and invest in growth while simultaneously reducing costs and changing the structure of its workforce.
For employees, that transformation has already resulted in thousands fewer positions.
For the supermarket, the challenge is to ensure that lower costs translate into a stronger business rather than simply a smaller one.
Morrisons’ job cuts are therefore more than a story about redundancies. They are part of a fundamental attempt to reshape a major British supermarket around lower costs, greater automation, a leaner head office and a different approach to convenience retail.
The success of that strategy will ultimately be judged not by how many jobs disappear, but by whether Morrisons can use the savings to become more competitive in a supermarket market where Lidl and Aldi continue to put pressure on the established players.