10 Amazing Facts about Retail Giant Walmart

#7. The Amount of Space That Walmart Stores Take up Is More Than Half of the Total Area of the District of Columbia

If Walmart's more than 952,203,837 square feet of retail space were spread out over one place it would take up roughly 34.16 square miles, the space enough to fill up almost half of the District of Columbia,

The company has since opened up many more shops, which takes up 68.34 square miles of total space. Shockingly, the measurement of 34.16 square miles doesn’t even include Walmart’s distribution facilities, office space, and parking lots. Furthermore, Fortune Magazine reported in 2011 that Walmart’s nearly 8,000 drivers logged 749 million miles in that year alone, enough to circle the Earth thirty thousand times.

#6. Walmart Is by Far The World’s Largest Private Employer

Walmart has more 2.2 million employees worldwide than the population of Houston. The mega-retailer employs 1.3 million people in the U.S. alone. In terms of private employment, Walmart is considerably ahead of its closest competitor, the China National Petroleum Corporation with 1.6 million in 2012.

#5. Walmart CEO Michael Duke Makes More in a Day Than the Average Walmart Employee Makes in a Year

In 2010, Ed Smith, a council member in Chicago, presented data about Walmart at a city council meeting. He said that CEO Michael Duke was being paid $35 million annually, while new employees were paid $8.75 an hour, amounting to $13,650 a year. 

If that were true, then what Duke earned in an hour was more than what an ordinary Walmart worker earned in a year. However, Equilar, an executive compensation research firm, pointed out that Smith’s numbers were a bit off. Their data showed that Duke earned a little under $20 million in 2009 and $28 million in 2008. But even based on those numbers, Duke was earning more in a day than an ordinary Walmart worker earned in a year.

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