Hundreds Of PA Walmart Workers Laid Off, Jobs Cut In 5 States Nationwide

PENNSYLVANIA — Walmart is laying off thousands of workers at five facilities across the U.S., including one in Pennsylvania, and giving them 90 days to find a new job.

The layoffs are happening at e-commerce fulfillment centers in Pennsylvania, California, Florida, New Jersey, and Texas per a Reuters report. These centers are where companies such as Amazon and Walmart manage their inventory and prepare orders to go directly to consumers.

Workers at the Bethlehem facility have been let go as the grocery giant reduces evening and weekend shifts, a company spokesperson confirmed to Reuters, while not listing the exact number. The PA Department of Labor does not have a WARN notice (Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification) listed for these employees.

WARN notices are mandated by U.S. Labor law and require companies with 100 or more employees to give 60 days’ notice before closing a plant or having a mass job action.

As Forbes reported, a number of big American companies including Meta, Amazon, Bed Bath & Beyond, Indeed, and Disney have been handing down layoffs in recent weeks as well as Walmart.

Walmart has 5,317 retail units across the United States, where employees laid off at the fulfillment centers are eligible for a role, according to Reuters.

Walmart has made moves to streamline its fulfillment centers with new technology, which the company said could also create new tech-focused jobs and get groceries to customers faster. Last June, the Arkansas-based retailer announced it would be building four next-generation fulfillment centers that combines human workers with robotics and machine learning “to set an entirely new precedent for us on the speed of fulfillment.”