Kroger Is Laying Off 1,000 Employees And The Reason Is Clear

Cincinnati, Ohio-based Kroger will shed another 1,000 jobs as it tries to deal with the financial ramifications of an aborted $25 billion merger deal with another grocery chain. Yet even as Kroger reorganizes, the company's top executive vows to keep prices low. The August 2025 layoffs will consist of corporate associates and will not include employees who work in Kroger's stores, manufacturing facilities, or distribution centers, Reuters reported. This comes after Kroger shed 200 corporate jobs in February 2025, per Al.com, and laid-off 750 employees after it closed down four of its Fred Meyer stores in the Seattle metro area, per Bloomberg.

And there may be more layoffs coming. In June 2025 the company announced it would close 60 underperforming stores in the next 18 months. Kroger, which operates 2,700 stores in 16 states (some with different brand names) has yet to officially list the stores they planned to close. However, Grocery Dive found 39 stores (24 under different brand names) that were either closed or slated to shut down in 2025, with high concentrations of doomed or shuttered grocers in the Puget Sound region in Washington State as well as the Chicago and Milwaukee suburbs.

According to a memo, obtained by Reuters, from Kroger's Interim CEO Ron Sargent, the corporate grocer wants to "simplify the organization." This makes sense, CFRA Research analyst Arun Sundaram told Reuters, since a lot of decisions were "put on hold" while Kroger sought to absorb Albertsons, a Boise, Idaho-based corporation with 2,200 stores in 35 states plus the District of Columbia.

Back in 2022, Kroger had an agreement to merge with Albertsons by acquiring $24.6 billion worth of shares and assuming Albertsons' $4.7 billion in debt. But the deal fell apart in 2024 soon after the Federal Trade Commission sued to stop it, arguing that such a melding would stop competition and send grocery prices higher. After two judges initiated injunctions, Albertsons walked away from the deal and the two companies are now suing each other for billions of dollars. Kroger's then CEO, Rodney McMullen, later resigned following a board probe of the executive's personal conduct.

Now that the merger deal is dead the company has shifted its attention and capital toward the needs of customers, Sargent's memo stated, which added that the corporate layoffs will enable Kroger to lower grocery price and open new stores.

Lowering prices would certainly be a relief for the average American who spends 10% of their monthly income on groceries. Yet while tariffs on foreign goods made some American cars more expensive and giant retailers worried, they have not been so harsh on discount grocers. This is why Walmart is less impacted by tariffs than Target.

This is also why Kroger still plans to invest more than $3 billion refurbishing or opening new stores across the U.S. while it closes its underperforming stores. The Sargent memo said Kroger will create more store jobs. The grocery chain even increased its sales forecast in a June 2025 earnings call when CEO Sargent, per Kroger's official transcript, declared that the price of more than 2,000 products have been lowered so far and the company is "proactively looking for ways to avoid raising prices for our consumers, and we consider price changes as a last resort."

But just to be safe, you might still want to explore grocery shopping strategies that save you money when visiting Kroger.