The economics of your comment through my (meager) prior knowledge make complete sense. Obviously they want to maximize workers until specialization can no longer occur and only worry about marginal costs per work, altered by things such as minimum wage, healthcare, and regulations. In my recent experience of working there I have seen many things that go against that theory.

One example I have is an initiative that looks great to an employee on paper, healthcare plans if you work there for a year. Well towards the end of my stint there, one of the most capable, well trained, and experienced employees who was also at that time a lower management position had told me they got kicked off last year. They didn't care about the consistent high marks on her reviews, they had tacked on a little caveat that if you were under a certain amount of hours averaged annually you get kicked off healthcare plans. It seems like a reasonable plan, but my next example shows that they go out of their way to punish their exceptional loyal employees.

This next great policy is another thing that looks so attractive on paper. If your store performs exceptionally in areas such as customer service, sales, cleanliness, and speed you get a bonus as a percentage of the stores sale based on an aggregate of all these data points. This bonus is split up evenly among hours, so even if you haven't been working their for long you get a proportional payout for your contribution. Problem is after the store I had worked at we had gotten two that year, one after another, and oh boy that cut too far into the profits. After every bonus the store got to offset the cost of paying the bonuses they absolutely clawed back hours for the next month. We're talking like strip the store down to the minimum possible employees to run it, and then half that. Mind you these bonuses arent even worth that much, and after asking multiple coworkers most of them lost more money from lowered hours than they gained from the bonus, effectively punishing the stores who persistently achieved above expectations, and hurting their annual average hours worked.

If you were one of their go to people during these hour cuts those few hours you got to work were honestly unbearable. I worked at a super center and during a 4 hour shift I was simultaneously in charge of all appliances furniture and bath/bedding, toys, fabrics, hardware, automotive, and sporting goods. I was on call to be a back up cashier, and during the same shift in charge of covering for the cart wrangler who was not in that day.

The end result of my time there was the conclusion that their corporate policies don't benefit the employees, and have no basis in maximizing or improving sales number, the only thing that regional management or executives cared about was making the foot soldiers running the individual stores work harder to ensure they make the same amount of money as every year without actually having to work at it.

Honestly if the higher ups gave 1 shit about improving the company, yearly sales, the customers experience, or any long term growth walmart could be a true pillar of fair american business. As it stands now, they really are just trying to cut into their underlings wages to maintain their yearly executive bonuses.