Layoffs Hitting Retail: J.Crew, Walmart Cutting Jobs

• Layoffs have started trickling into the retail sector, primarily impacting corporate employees.
• J.Crew, Nordstrom, Walmart, and more have made job cuts since the start of the year.
• Still, few retailers are laying off store employees as the “labor hoarding” trend continues in 2023.

Layoffs have officially arrived in the retail sector. 

Since the start of 2023, major retailers ranging from department stores to direct-to-consumer brands have cut staff, the latest swing in a sector that’s been hit hard by labor challenges and inflation. 

Most of the cuts so far have impacted corporate retail employees. At a store level, many retailers are actually holding tighter to workers than usual, even seasonal employees, in a practice economists call “labor hoarding.”

Still, three months into the year, over a dozen companies have already announced layoffs impacting hundreds, sometimes thousands of employees. 

Here are the retailers who have announced layoffs in 2023: 

• J.Crew: Around 40 corporate employees were laid off recently, equal to less than 3% of the company’s workforce, WWD reported. 
• Walmart: The big box store chain has cut hundreds of jobs at store and fulfillment centers in recent weeks. Hundreds were laid off at e-commerce fulfillment centers across the country, while 480 roles were cut due to store closures in Portland, Oregon, according to documents filed with the state. The company is also closing three tech hubs in Texas, Oregon, and California and offering those employees the option to relocate to its Arkansas headquarters or accept a severance package
• Gopuff: The delivery startup laid off more than 100 employees, or about 2% of its workforce, Bloomberg reported. It’s Gopuff’s third round of layoffs in the last year. 
• Zulily: The online retailer cut an undisclosed number of its nearly 2,000 corporate employees in an effort to trim expenses, Puget Sound Business Journal reported. 
• Nordstrom: The company is shuttering is Canadian operations by late June, citing no realistic path to profitability. About 2,500 employees will be cut as a result.

• Wayfair: The online home goods retailer cut 1,750 jobs, or about 10% of its workforce in January. The majority of the layoffs, about 1,200 positions, were corporate employees in an effort to “eliminate management layers and reorganize to be more agile,” Wayfair said. 
• Saks.com: At least 100 positions were eliminated at the e-commerce branch of Saks Fifth Avenue, or about 3.5% of its staff. Saks Off 5th’s e-commerce site also conducted layoffs, though it’s unclear how many workers were impacted. 
• The Bay: The e-commerce arm of Canadian department store Hudson’s Bay laid off less than 2% of its employees.
• Ruggable: The direct-to-consumer rug brand cut 100 corporate jobs in what the company said was a move to better position it for “today’s challenging economic environment.”
• Amazon: About 18,000 employees were laid off in January, many of them focused on the e-commerce giant’s brick-and-mortar retail business. 
• Zappos: More than 300 workers, or about a fifth of the workforce, were cut from the Amazon-owned online shoe brand as part of the January layoffs.