Drafted 8 July, updated 29 October 2025
Europe has fallen behind America and the gap is growing. From technology to energy, from capital markets to universities, the EU cannot compete with the US
This will have an impact far beyond relative living standards. Europe’s dependence on the US for technology, energy, capital and military protection is steadily undermining any aspirations the EU might have for ‘strategic autonomy’.
In 2008, the EU and US economies were roughly the same size. But since the global financial crisis, their economic fortunes have dramatically diverged…
In 2008, the EU economy was slightly larger than the US economy: $16.2 trillion versus $14.7 trillion. By 2022, the US economy had grown to $25 trillion, while the EU and the UK together had only reached $19.8 trillion.
The US economy is now almost a third larger. It is more than 50 per cent bigger than the EU without the UK’. The aggregate figures are shocking. Underlying them is a picture of a Europe that has fallen behind, sector by sector (the only real shadow, a very big one, is the Trump administration’s debt growth).
And in distribution, the gap is ever more apparent:in the USA they are in force:
- strong automation
- growing productivity
- unimaginable online turnover
Walmart executives aim to grow sales by four per cent a year, but do not expect to significantly increase the number of employees. The employee figures raise questions about the future of work in US retail, which employs one in 10 American workers and provides ample avenues for promotion for those without college degrees. Approximately 1.6 million Walmart employees are in the US, a figure that has barely budged in the past decade. Walmart’s wage trend is in contrast to competitors such as Costco, Target and Home Depot.
Wall Street analysts say the company’s expansion without job creation reflects a hard push into e-commerce and the automation of cumbersome tasks, from unloading shipping pallets to updating shelf price tags. Artificial intelligence is poised to enhance these efforts. Walmart executives say technology investments mean new roles for workers, not less. “Businesses will upgrade. Jobs will change. And many years from now, we will still employ a large number of people, and we will be happy to do that,” said CEO Doug McMillon at an investor event in April.
This week (in June 2025) , Walmart will host 13,000 employees and shareholders at its Associates Week event, an annual ritual at its Northwest Arkansas home. But critics say workers are missing out. Walmart’s US net sales have risen 36 per cent over the past five years, while average hourly wages in the US have increased 28 per cent, to $18.25.
“Walmart’s jobless growth is a continuation of a pernicious trend that Walmart itself has promoted: squeezing more production out of every hour of work and increasing sales faster than wages,” said John Marshall, director of capital strategies at the Local 3000 division of the United Food and Commercial Workers, which ended an unsuccessful effort to unionize the company a decade ago. Walmart’s wage trend is at odds with that of peers.
Big retailers Costco, Target and Home Depot have added tens of thousands of employees over the past five years. E-commerce titan Amazon has nearly doubled its worldwide workforce to 1.6 million.
“The dominant term, the trajectory is very clear. I think most retailers want to automate many different functions within their operations because labour is a very, very expensive part of doing business,” said Neil Saunders, retail analyst at GlobalData. “We’ve seen Walmart lean heavily on that.” Walmart in April demonstrated labour-saving technologies to investors and the media at two new warehouses outside Dallas, one a cold-storage hub for food, the other a distribution centre to enable quick deliveries for e-commerce customers.
Walmart executives say the technology investments mean new roles for workers, no less. About 600 employees work inside the 730,000-square-foot refrigerated warehouse. The ratio equates to one employee for every 1,200 square feet, about the size of a small house (120 square metres). Inside, a multi-level geometry of lifts, conveyors and sorters handles pallets of eggs, meat, produce and other perishables after they arrive from suppliers, storing them in racks up to 80 feet high. Guided by algorithms, the robots then sort the food to be grouped and shipped to coolers in 175 shops across the region. The centres can ship more than twice the volume of traditional cold stores, reducing costs by 20 per cent. Rob Montgomery, executive vice president of supply chain operations at Walmart, said the technology has saved associates from walking miles and lifting tens of thousands of pounds a day: “Here, our associates are working with automation to get to work.
Two miles away, Walmart’s DFW-5 distribution centre is for sale for a US e-commerce business that grew 21 per cent year-on-year last quarter. The 1.5-square-metre warehouse can hold up to 2 million individual products, both Walmart’s and those of third-party suppliers using its online marketplace. It employs 650 staff. Inside, work that once took 12 steps has been condensed to five, helping to reduce the cost by an expected 30 per cent at the end of this year. “Whatused to be a three- or four-hour process to process an order now happens in a building like this in less than 30 minutes,” said Kieran Shanahan, chief operating officer of Walmart US. Among the automated jobs is the construction of cardboard boxes.
…Local governments in Texas approved millions of dollars in tax breaks for Walmart to build both the distribution centre and the cold storage warehouse, opening in 2023 and 2024 respectively. In exchange for the proposed subsidies, the city of Lancaster and surrounding Dallas County each required Walmart to employ hundreds of people at the locations. …
Walmart’s dedicated e-commerce distribution centres in the US today number 29, down from 40 in 2020, annual reports show.
Wall Street analysts say the company’s expansion without job creation reflects a strong push into e-commerce and automation of cumbersome tasks.
Automation “will dramatically improve the number of employees at some of these supply chain locations,” said Steven Shemesh, retail analyst at RBC Capital Markets. Within shops, shipments arriving from robot warehouses that have already been sorted can go directly to shop shelves, instead of having to be disassembled by hand in back rooms…
Walmart also divested its Argentine business in 2020 and sold its majority stake in Japanese retailer Seiyu in 2021. The two operations were less labour efficient at Walmart and employed 50,000 people. Gildenberg added that strong inflation in recent years had pumped up sales.
In the labour market squeezed by the Covid-19 pandemic, Walmart has tried to retain workers with pay raises and bonuses. About 92% of US associates are paid by the hour. “Walmart sets the de facto wage for service sector employment in many parts of the country,” said Nelson Lichtenstein, professor of history at the University of California at Santa Barbara and author and editor of books on the company.
Walmart will add front-line workers as it executes plans to open 150 US shops and dozens of member-only Sam’s Club warehouse shops…
But the real crux of the matter is thetechnological acceleration of Walmart and Amazon, absolute leaders, absolutely unattainable for the European retail sector, which will continue to suffer unfair competition from online platforms.
Below: an article on Amazon’s automation.
