Every two weeks, roughly 2.1 million associates collect a paycheck from the Bentonville, Arkansas-based retail giant. About 1.6 million of them work in the U.S., where the average hourly field associate now earns $18.25.
Added together, workforce estimates put the company’s yearly pay to employees at more than $90 billion, a number that traces back to a boy doing chores to help his family get by.
Sam Walton was born on March 29, 1918, in Kingfisher, Oklahoma, and grew up in small Missouri towns as the Great Depression squeezed families across the country. He milked the family cow, bottled the extra milk and drove it to customers. Then he worked a paper route delivering the Columbia Daily Tribune and sold magazine subscriptions on the side.
The hustle didn’t stop in college. At the University of Missouri, he delivered newspapers and waited tables to cover his costs. After graduating in 1940, he joined J.C. Penney as a management trainee.
Following his Army service in World War II, he bought a Ben Franklin variety store in Newport, Arkansas, in 1945. When the landlord refused to renew the lease, Walton moved to Bentonville and opened Walton’s 5 and 10 in 1950.
On July 2, 1962, he opened the first Walmart in Rogers, Arkansas. His bet was simple: keep prices low and make it up in volume.
That approach now drives a business that brought in $713 billion in revenue in fiscal 2026. The company’s minimum for store associates is $14 an hour, supply chain workers average $27 an hour, and the average store manager earned more than $117,000 in fiscal 2025. The median employee’s total compensation last fiscal year was $30,520.
Walton died on April 5, 1992, at age 74.
The ladder he climbed still exists inside the company, too. The average first promotion comes within nine months, and about 75% of salaried store managers started out in hourly roles.
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