Which U.S. regions or states are most affected by recent Walmart closures?

1. Rural, low-income areas — the biggest structural impact

A Washington Post analysis of the announced 154-store reduction finds the closures fall most heavily on lower-income, low-density communities, where Walmart Express locations account for more than 90 percent of the exits in that quadrant, signaling a concentrated retrenchment from smaller rural markets ^[1].

2. The Southeast is a primary geographic cluster for Express closures

That same Washington Post reporting identifies the Southeast as the locus for much of the Walmart Express pullback, noting 88 of the 96 store closures in the most affected quadrant are Express outlets and that many of those are in the Southeast, which amplifies the economic and access consequences for rural communities there ^[1].

3. California features among the states with multiple permanent closures

Separate media lists and company notices show California as one of the states with several confirmed permanent Walmart shutdowns—reporters have singled out specific cities including San Diego, El Cajon, West Covina, Fremont and Granite Bay as places where locations are expected to close, making California one of the more visible state-level concentrations of shuttered stores outside the rural Express wave ^{[2] [4]}.

4. Scattered closures across multiple states and metropolitan areas

Beyond the rural-express pattern and the California cluster, coverage and compiled lists show closures are also occurring in a range of other states—reports mention closures across five states in one roundup and cite specific closures in places like Richmond, Virginia, and several Midwestern and Sunbelt cities—making the overall pattern a mix of targeted rural pullbacks and isolated metropolitan exits ^{[5] [3] [2]}.

5. Corporate framing — “optimization” rather than regional retrenchment

Walmart’s public messaging to investors and the press frames the moves as an optimization to focus on higher-traffic, higher-profit locations and to reduce redundancy where multiple stores cannibalize one another, a rationale echoed in press summaries of company statements and earnings commentary ^{[6] [7]}.

6. Why the pattern matters: food access, jobs and retail deserts

Analysts and local reporting emphasize that removing Express-format Walmarts from low-density, lower-income communities can exacerbate food-access and retail-desert problems because those small-format stores were intended to serve neighborhoods underserved by full-size supermarkets, and their disproportionate closure in poorer rural areas raises community-level consequences beyond company profit metrics ^[1].

7. Uncertainties and data limitations in the public record

Available public reporting is a patchwork of company statements, media lists and data visualizations; there is not a single comprehensive government or Walmart-published dataset in the sources provided that maps every closure by county and demographic profile, so while patterns (rural/low-income and a notable set of closures in California) are clear in the coverage, the precise state-by-state ranking and total counts require access to an authoritative closure list or raw corporate disclosure to confirm definitively ^{[1] [6]}.

8. Two plausible alternate readings

One reading frames the move as strategic pruning—closing underperforming or overlapping stores while opening new outlets elsewhere—consistent with Walmart’s “optimize performance” message ^[6]; an alternate, data-driven reading points to an uneven social impact, where corporate efficiency decisions disproportionately remove retail services from poorer, rural Southern communities, especially via the Express pilot pullback ^[1].