December 23, 2025
Journalists adore the CEO of the world's largest retailer.
Please welcome Doug McMillon.
Since his announcement in mid-November that he planned to step down as Walmart CEO early next year, McMillon has been enjoying the tributes. During his 12-year reign as the world's largest retailer, Walmart's annual revenue increased by nearly $200 billion, to $681 billion. Its stock price rose more than 300 percent, significantly outperforming the S&P 500, and its market capitalization exceeded $900 million.
However, these numbers mask Walmart's contribution to the country's stark economic divide. And the press blithely ignored it.
“Walmart CEO Doug McMillon to resign on January 31st” New York Times bullish watched“capping a 12-year run that transformed the company from a stalwart brick-and-mortar retailer into a serious Amazon contender, making the big-box store the envy of many in the retail industry.” McMillon “leaves Walmart in a strong position after years of work, repositioning it as a powerful digital player and a more competitive employer.” “I cannot overstate how challenging it is to take a company with such a strong heritage and make it competitive in today's environment, given the pace of change,” said Joanna Starek, CEO advisor. Time.
In an effort to improve its relationship with its 2.1 million workers worldwide, the newspaper writes, Walmart under McMillon has “raised wages in an effort to compete for talent, raising both base pay for U.S. store managers and introducing hourly pay for its store workers.” The company “has also begun attracting a new type of customer who can come to its website for delivery not only of inexpensive clothing, home goods and groceries, but also items like the $4,000 Louis Vuitton handbags it now sells.”
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The document was missing some important details. Time check. Although wages at Walmart have increased under McMillon (from an average of $12 an hour in 2015), they are still very low. The average hourly rate for a “field associate” (as Walmart calls its cashiers, stockists and other hands-on workers) is just over $18, which works out to about $36,000 a year—well below the cost of living in much of the country. In 2023, Walmart adopted a new wage structure in which most new employees will earn the lowest wage for the store that hires them—as little as $14 in some regions.
Walmart has expanded other benefits, including parental leave, job training, and free college and technical education. This was not done out of any impulse of charity, but rather out of a need to reduce staff turnover, which proved costly. Even with the wage increase, Walmart pays less than other retailers, including Costco (where entry-level sales associates earn $20 to $21 an hour and top-level professionals make $32) and Target. In employee satisfaction studies, Walmart lags significantly behind both of these retailers.
Meanwhile, McMillon's compensation for the year ended Feb. 1 was about $27.4 million ($1.5 million base salary plus stock and bonuses). Walmart's six top executives received combined compensation of about $100 million. In addition, McMillon owns more than 4 million shares of Walmart stock worth approximately $500 million.
According to Wall Street JournalMcMillon was worth every penny. “Why are CEOs paid so much?” read the headline above an editorial praising his position. It cited McMillon's expansion of Walmart's e-commerce business, his integration of artificial intelligence into store management and his deft management of Trump tariffs. In addition to the sharp rise in the company's shares, Magazine As noted, Walmart “increased wages and benefits” for its employees. Noting that big business is now a political target of both the left and the right, he urged readers to “compare the wealth created over the last decade by Walmart with the performance of the federal government and cry for the feds.” While Walmart's success was not the result of McMillon alone, “its profits have enabled hundreds of thousands of Americans to buy homes, pay for college, and save for a comfortable retirement. The Gen Z socialists now rising in politics won't admit it, but they live off the prosperity created by wealth creators like Walmart's CEO.”
That last comment seems as ignorant as it is snide. However, today's young progressives could benefit greatly from a rising stock market, and they know how unequally those benefits have been distributed. About 40 percent of Americans don't own stocks, and among those who do, holdings are dramatically skewed. The top 10 percent of the population owns more than 90 percent of all stocks, while the bottom 50 percent owns just one percent. Not many of them can afford the $4,000 Louis Vuitton bags that Walmart now sells.
The Waltons can. Descendants of Sam Walton, the founder of Walmart, the Walmart family is the richest not only in the United States, but in the world. Walton's children and grandchildren control about 45 percent of the company's shares, and their combined wealth is estimated at $450 billion. Sam's three children – Jim, Rob and Alice – are worth more than $100 billion each and are among the 20 richest people in the world. Forbeslist of the 400 richest Americans. Alice is the richest woman in the world.
This is shareholder-driven capitalism at its most grotesque. And here's a fundamental fact: The Waltons' wealth is directly tied to the struggles of Walmart workers. By reducing labor costs, a company can maintain earnings per share growth, which increases its stock price. Over the past half-century, executives and shareholders have siphoned off an ever-increasing share of national income from retailers, forklift operators and delivery drivers. Whatever raises manual workers receive at Walmart and other companies, their wages still do not support the middle class, fueling disillusionment with capitalism, a fascination with socialism, and the fragmentation of society.
On December 9, Doug McMillon was in New York to ring the Nasdaq opening bell. He celebrated Walmart's move to the exchange after more than 40 years on the New York Stock Exchange. Joining the tech-heavy Nasdaq was part of its rebranding as a company committed to “innovation and growth as a people-driven, technology-enabled omnichannel retailer,” as he awkwardly put it.
That same morning McMillon appeared on Scream boxmorning financial talk show on CNBC, and—even by that show's hospitable standards—he was treated with reverence. “We've known each other for a long time,” co-host Andrew Ross Sorkin said. – How long have you been planning to leave?
—Are you going to write a book? asked fellow host Joe Kernen. Kernen noted that the company is increasing wages. “Our partners are doing well,” McMillon said.
“And managers do well,” added a third presenter, Becky Quick. “Does the Walmart employee think the system works?”
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“People can become managers,” McMillon said. (Walmart has 4,600 managers in the United States—one for each store—which means about 1.5 million employees don't become managers.)
Referring to Sam Walton, Kernen said that “it's a miracle what he did for the American Dream.”
“We have to keep it up,” McMillon said.
“You have been a phenomenal leader,” Quick said, “not only in the company, but also in defense of American values.”
“You guys helped us by teaching us,” McMillon said.
Not so much the American people.
Labor was almost entirely absent from coverage of McMillon's retirement. Journalistic reports must carry the disclaimer: “No employees were interviewed for this article.”
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