Kroger and Albertsons cut worker hours. A new report looks at the impact to workers

After a two-year battle with regulators, a federal judge ruled in late December to block the merger of grocery behemoths Kroger and Albertsons. The deal fell apart after facing significant pushback—and a lawsuit—from the Federal Trade Commission under the Biden administration, in part over concerns that unionized grocery workers would have less leverage to negotiate wage increases and respond to layoffs following a merger. 

Those concerns were not unfounded: The overwhelming majority of grocery workers (92%) are frontline staff in nonsupervisory positions, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics—and as industry leaders, Kroger and Albertsons employ 28% of grocery workers across the country. Hourly wages for all grocery workers have effectively stagnated for the past two decades, hovering just under $18 in 2024 when adjusted for inflation, and weekly earnings have actually dropped by 15%. 

A new report by the nonprofit organization Economic Roundtable—which draws heavily on surveys of Kroger and Albertsons workers in California, Colorado, and Washington conducted by the United Food and Commercial Workers union—suggests that understaffing at these grocery stores impacts many workers and exacerbates the industry-wide issue of depressed wages. For many grocery employees, chronic understaffing and being denied additional hours on the job without a meaningful increase in hourly pay makes it even more difficult to earn a living wage.

The report’s authors argue that reduced staffing at grocery stores has affected the shopping experience for consumers, as workers struggle to keep shelves fully stocked and manage their workload. Three-quarters of workers surveyed by UFCW said they struggled to finish assigned tasks during shifts.

Kroger itself reported 14.1% fewer labor hours per store in 2023 than in 2019. But the Economic Roundtable’s report estimates that Kroger decreased labor hours despite increased demand due to e-commerce sales, leading to a labor shortfall of 21% relative to 2019. At Albertsons, which the report found was already understaffed in 2019, the shortfall amounted to 13%.

In a statement to Fast Company, a Kroger spokesperson said, “We are committed to improving associates’ wages and benefits while keeping prices affordable for customers. We intentionally staff our stores to keep them running smoothly and creating an outstanding customer experience. Our decisions are data-driven to balance workload, schedules and customer service. Unrealistic demands by UFCW that do not reflect today’s competitive retail landscape will jeopardize the long-term sustainability of unionized businesses and advance non-union competitors.” (Albertsons did not respond to a request for comment.)

The rise of lower staffing levels alongside wage stagnation also measurably affects workers’ ability to manage their finances and cover basic expenses. In the UFCW surveys, many grocery workers report getting their hours cut or being denied additional hours by their employer—a trend that is also captured by BLS data, which indicates that average weekly hours logged by nonsupervisory workers have dropped 11% since 2003 to under 29 hours. Grocery workers are also more likely, on average, to be part-time employees relative to workers in other industries, with the share of workers being 58% greater.

By and large, the workers surveyed believed their pay did not fairly compensate them for their workload and experience, and that they saw themselves as essential frontline workers but were not treated as such by their employers. Many of them reported struggling to afford monthly expenses like rent, with more than two-thirds of grocery workers claiming to not have secure housing.

Only 16% of grocery workers said they made enough money to cover basic expenses. On average, annual pay for nonsupervisory grocery workers in the regions surveyed is just over $25,000—and many such workers are eligible for Medicaid and other federal programs that help support low-income families.

Over the past few decades, wage stagnation—and the yawning gap between worker pay and executive compensation—has impacted rank-and-file employees across industries. Even so, many workers have actually seen a bump in pay: According to the Economic Roundtable report, weekly earnings have increased by 15% over the past 20 years for production and nonsupervisory workers in other industries. Grocery workers, however, have experienced the opposite, leading to a 50% gap in pay relative to workers in other industries—a shift that the report finds has also coincided with a notable decline in union membership across the grocery industry.