Walmart has grown from a single store in Rogers, Arkansas, into a massive American institution. It takes in more money per year than most countries produce in GDP. It employs 1.4 million people, or nearly 1 in 100 American workers. Its stores cover 1.1 billion square feet.
It's also evolving fast as it tries to expand its reach into more places and more parts of people's lives than simple grocery and clothes shopping. Below are nine charts that explain exactly how big Walmart is, and exactly how it intends keep getting bigger.
In its Fortune 500 listing, Fortune puts Walmart in the "general merchandisers" category, alongside other big-box stores like Target and department stores like Macy's. But Walmart barely resembles those peers when you look at revenues. The store's $476 billion in 2013 revenues is nearly three times the size of revenues at the next five biggest retailers in its class. In fact, Walmart's annual revenues are less comparable to your typical US retailer than they are to the GDP of a large national economy, like Nigeria (adjusted for purchasing power parity).
