Walmart Nation: Mapping the Largest Employers in the U.S.

Walmart Nation: Mapping the Largest Employers in the U.S.

The Chart of the Week is a weekly Visual Capitalist feature on Fridays.

In an era where Amazon steals most of the headlines, it’s easy to forget about brick-and-mortar retailers like Walmart.

But, even though the market values the Bezos e-commerce juggernaut at about twice the sum of Walmart, the blue big-box store is very formidable in other ways. For example, revenue and earnings are two areas where Walmart still reigns supreme, and the stock just hit all-time highs yesterday on an earnings beat.

That’s not all, though. As today’s map shows, Walmart is dominant in one other notable way: the company is the biggest private employer in America in a whopping 22 states.

Wally World

Using data from 24/7 Wall Street, we mapped out the largest employer (excluding public administrative bodies, such as state governments) in each state.

Here are the states where Walmart took the title:

The company has 1.5 million employees in the U.S. – and about 950,000 of them are in the states above.

A Southern Institution

In Walmart’s home state of Arkansas, the company employees 53,310 people, or about 4% of the non-farm work force. That includes about 18,600 jobs at the HQ in Bentonville, AR.

Despite the company’s obvious influence in the state where it was founded, Walmart is also the largest employer across the South in general. Whether it is Texas (171,531 employees) or Virginia (44,621), there are Walmarts aplenty in the states surrounding Arkansas.

One notable exception to this rule? North Carolina, where the University of North Carolina University system employs 74,079 people. However, that doesn’t mean that Walmart has zero presence in the Tar Heel State – it actually has 218 retail stores and 58,525 employees in North Carolina, according to its website.

Your Turn, Amazon

In case you may be wondering, Amazon is not the largest employer in any state – even in the company’s home state of Washington, where it still lags behind Boeing.

However, Amazon’s epic ramp-up is quickly taking over Seattle, and the company now has as much office space there as the city’s next 40 biggest employers combined.

And who knows, with over 238 bids for Amazon’s new HQ2, it’s possible that the company could be adding up to 50,000 new jobs in another state very soon.