Lowe's Announces Corporate Job Cuts

By Christine Kern, contributing writer

Layoffs affect some 525 corporate employees to refocus its organizational structure.

Just a month after CEO Robert Niblock notified employees that Lowe's would cut 2,400 jobs company-wide, the home improvement retailer has announced plans to lay off some 525 corporate employees, including 430 people at its Mooresville, NC headquarters, 70 support positions from its Wilkesboro, NC customer service offices and 25 corporate support staffers elsewhere.

“It is always very difficult to make decisions like these that impact our people, and we only did so after careful consideration and with the understanding that our actions today were needed to position Lowe’s for the future,” the company stated.

The two rounds of layoffs are in part a response to third-quarter profits and sales that were lower than analyst estimates.

The new structure will result in a leaner organization with fewer managerial layers, and the creation of 600 jobs in Wilkesboro to support contact center and central production operations will keep Lowe's employment presence in North Carolina consistent.

The corporate job cuts also follow weeks after Lowe's announced the hiring of 1,700 full-time employees to fill new customer support and central production office positions in Indianapolis, Albuquerque and Wilkesboro, and the announcement  earlier this month that it would hire more than 45,000 seasonal employees in anticipation of the busy spring/summer home improvement season. 

Lowe’s has been struggling to compete with fellow home improvement retailer Home Depot, which was recently ranked as #1 among big box retailers for its digital performance, as Innovative Retail Technologies reported. To meet customer expectations, The Home Depot has been making major investments in physical locations and in the digital world, helping it to grab a larger portion of the home improvement market base.  Lowe’s ranked #7 in a three-way tie in the Big Box US 2016 Study.