This Is the State With the Most Walmarts

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Aug 31, 9:30AM EDT

Follow 24/7 Wall St. on Google

This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

This Is the State With the Most Walmarts — © walmartcorporate / Flickr

Walmart is the largest retailer in America. Last year, it had sales of well over $550 billion. The company was founded by Sam Walton in 1962. His heirs are among the richest people in the United States, almost exclusively due to their shares in Walmart.

Walmart has 10,524 stores in 24 nations, although not every store it owns carries the Walmart name. The company employs over 2.2 million people, about half of whom are in the United States. These chains of physical stores are threatened by e-commerce, particularly Amazon. To combat this, Walmart has built a strong online presence of its own.

In America, Walmart operates under two divisions. The first is known as Walmart U.S., which has 4,740 locations. The other is membership warehouse Sam’s Club, which is used by businesses and individuals. Sam’s Club has 599 locations. Although the figure is challenged, some analyses claim that 90% of Americans live within 15 miles of a Walmart.

To reach many of the people close to a Walmart store, the company has added several services to its traditional in-store shopping. Walmart has a service that allows customers to order ahead and have curbside pickup. This became more popular during the COVID-19 pandemic. Walmart also delivers some items, the most notable of which is groceries.
[nativounit]
Walmart’s store stronghold is in the southern states, although it has expanded elsewhere. It has a major presence in Florida (385 stores), North Carolina (216), Georgia (215), Tennessee (152), Alabama (144) and Louisiana (138).

The state with the largest number of Walmart stores is also in the south. Texas has 602. It is the second-largest state by population at 29,145,505, according to the Census Bureau. The largest state, California, has a population of 39,538,223, and it has the third-largest number of Walmart stores at 320.

For the most part, Walmart has stopped growing in terms of physical stores. However, that has not halted its revenue growth. In the future, its growth most likely will be driven by e-commerce. Why add more stores when it has so many close to America’s population?

Click here to see how many people in each state work for Walmart.
[wallst_email_signup]

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.