The most popular item at Walmart is the banana. Before a hurricane, Walmarts fill their stores with strawberry pop-tarts. There are plenty of wacky bits of information to explore in a company with history such as Walmart. Today, however, I’ve decided to focus on facts that show the scale of this business behemoth.
- Between 1962, when Walmart was founded, and 2002, the number of single-store retailers in the U.S. dropped by 55%.
- Walmart is the 3rd largest employer in the world, with only the armies of the United States and China employing more people. In fact, Walmart employs about as many people as the entire population of Houston, Texas.
- Walmart’s parking lots alone, if laid together, would take more space than Tampa, Florida.
- 90% of Americans live within 12 minutes of a Walmart, and each week approximately one-third of Americans visit Walmart’s U.S. stores.
- Walmart’s website sees 260 million shoppers each week, or about the population of Indonesia.
- Walmart loses $3 billion a year to theft.
- Walmart is sued once every 2 hours.
- 18% of all food stamp expenditures are at Walmart stores.
- There’s a positive correlation between the obesity rate of a population and the number of Walmarts servicing that population. For each additional Walmart per 100,000 residents, the average Body Mass Index increases by 0.25 units and the obesity rate rises by 2.4%.