Yet another retailer has decided to move forward with wage increases as the ongoing struggle to retain hourly workers continues. This time the move comes from Home Depot, which announced Tuesday plans to bump its starting wage to $15 an hour.
The salary increase will be worth nearly $1 billion in investments, according to the retailer. Workers in the US and Canada will see an increase in their paychecks this month after it went into effect on Feb. 6.
Throughout the last year, other retailers have made similar investments in their hourly workforce, including, most recently, Walmart, Amazon, and Target.
Last month Walmart shared that its hourly wage would increase to $17.50, Amazon bumped pay to more than $19 an hour for warehouse and delivery workers in September, and last year Target made headlines for increasing its starting pay range to $15-$24 an hour.
Ted Decker, the CEO of Home Depot, shared in an email with employees that higher wages should help the company find high-quality workers and keep staff, CNBC reported.
He added that the bump “positions us more favorably in every market where we operate.”
Decker isn’t wrong, as the retail industry is struggling to bring in workers with more than 11 million job openings as of December, the Bureau of Labor Statistics shared. More than 1 million of those jobs are retail trade positions.
“This investment will help us attract and retain the best talent into our pipeline,” Decker said.
The pay increase isn’t the only investment that Home Depot is making. The company has also added more training opportunities for workers, which, according to Decker, saw the promotion of more than 65,000 employees in 2022.
The pay increase will affect the nearly 440,000 people Home Depot employs in the US and the 34,000 in Canada. Most of its employees are hourly workers, the company shared.
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