US supermarket giant Walmart has announced plans to raise its average hourly wages starting next month.

The company said that it will lift its average hourly wage pay from $17 to $17.50, with the minimum wage rising by up to $2 to a range of $14-19 per hour based on location. The salary increase will impact around 340,00 workers across 3,000 locations. Walmart is the largest private employer in the US with over 1.6 million staff.

The price increase for retail staff comes half a year after Walmart increased the average pay for pharmacy workers to over $20 per hour. At the time, the company said that it would offer more frequent and automatic pay raises to fight labour shortages.

While Walmart is attempting to remain competitive in an increasingly tight US labour market where the national rate of unemployment falling to a five-decade low, its offering still lies behind the likes of Target, Costco and Amazon which have all offered minimum hourly wages of at least $15 since 2021.

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