(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) Walmart CEO Doug McMillion predicted that wage inflation will be “with us basically forever,” and went into detail about how higher price levels are impacting the market.
According to The Daily Wire, the Consumer Price Index rose 8.5% year-over-year as of July. McMillon explained that Walmart is gaining more customers as wealthier families try to cut costs.
“It’s a conflicting period in terms of the data. If you look at what’s happening across categories and across income levels, inflation is having an impact particularly for those who don’t have as much money,” McMillon said.
“So we see them behaving in different ways … Higher income families are shopping at Walmart because they’re so price sensitive right now.”
“We shared earlier this morning that families making more than $100,000 in household income have driven a lot of our growth during this last quarter,” he said.
Despite the slight decline in year-over-year inflation, food prices rose 1.3% month-over-month and 13.1% year-over-year.
“Right around the middle of the first quarter is when we saw food inflation reach a level where behavior started to change,” McMillon added.
“It got to a level where people making less than $50,000 household income started behaving differently, and then to the $75,000 level and then to the $100,000 level.”
McMillon also commented on the raising of wages for their 1.6 million domestic employees, and stated that he believes wage inflation will endure indefinitely.
“We’ve raised our wages, which we’re happy to do … that creates a new level of which pricing has to be adjusted to reflect,” he commented. “So I think there’s some level of inflation that’s going to be with us basically forever.”
“Hopefully we’ll see food inflation in particular improve as we go through next year,” he concluded.
Despite the still high inflation and rising food prices, the Biden administration spun the latest minuscule decrease in inflation as 0% inflation. They did not mention the rising prices of other goods.
NOW – Biden: “Today we received news that our economy had zero percent inflation in the month of July. Zero percent.” pic.twitter.com/HXpRy5xmW5
— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) August 10, 2022
