Major UK supermarket sheds nearly 5,000 jobs in restructuring drive as 100 stores face closure

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Morrisons' average monthly workforce fell from 101,144 to 96,232 in the year to October 2025

Nearly 5,000 jobs disappeared from Morrisons last year as the supermarket battled to bring its finances under control.

The cuts mainly hit shop-floor workers as the retailer recorded a £629million pre-tax loss and saw its reported net debt climb above £7.5billion.

New accounts filed at Companies House show Morrisons' average monthly workforce fell from 101,144 to 96,232 in the year to October 2025.

This represents a reduction of 4,912 employees, including more than 4,200 people working in its stores. Jobs were also lost across the supermarket's food manufacturing and distribution operations.

The Bradford-based retailer, Britain's sixth-largest supermarket chain, reported a pre-tax loss of £629million before exceptional items during the year.

Its reported net debt also rose from £7.07billion to £7.52billion despite the company's efforts to cut costs and strengthen its finances.

That figure includes lease liabilities and preference shares. Once these are excluded, Morrisons' net borrowings stood at £3.2billion.

However, revenue increased by 2.8 per cent to £15.7billion, while underlying earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation remained steady at £835million.

Trading was disrupted by a cyber attack shortly before Christmas 2024, which took IT systems offline and affected the availability of products in stores.

Morrisons also faced higher costs linked to measures announced in the autumn Budget.

The supermarket is owned by American private equity firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice and is working to revive its performance under chief executive Rami Baitieh.

A Morrisons spokesman said: "In our 2025 full year we grew like-for-like sales every quarter, maintained Ebitda and our market share, and demonstrated our resilience in the face of some tough external headwinds, from the cyber incident, rising inflation and government cost increases, which we worked hard to offset."

Morrisons attributed the workforce reduction primarily to three factors: the winding down of its newspaper home delivery operation within the convenience division, a restructuring of its retail people team, and the scaling back of the Rathbones bakery business.

Crucially, the company insisted there had been no formal redundancy programme across its store network. A spokesman said: "There was no additional redundancy programme in stores, where numbers were only reduced by not replacing those who had chosen to leave."

The reduction was largely achieved by not replacing employees who left, rather than through compulsory redundancies. This helped limit the direct impact on existing staff, although Morrisons still ended the year with almost five per cent fewer workers.

Further jobs remain at risk after the supermarket announced in May that it would close 100 Morrisons Daily convenience stores over the following months.

All the locations facing closure are former McColl's stores bought by Morrisons in 2022. The supermarket said they remained among its worst-performing sites despite attempts to turn them around.

Morrisons has not released a complete list, but confirmed locations include Fairfax Avenue in Hull, Stokesley High Street in Middlesbrough, Woodthorpe in York and Crown Wood in Bracknell. Some of the stores have already closed.

Several affected shops also contain Post Office counters. Closures in areas including Woodley and Crown Wood are therefore expected to leave customers without those postal services.

The supermarket has lost market share in recent years, with both Aldi and Lidl overtaking it. Chief executive Rami Baitieh is leading a turnaround plan under owner Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, which took Morrisons private in 2021.

The convenience stores are not the only parts of the business to be cut. Morrisons has also closed cafés, florists and fresh-food counters across its estate over the past year.

Despite the closures, a company spokesman said growing the convenience business remained "a core part" of Morrisons' strategy.

The supermarket plans to open more franchised stores to help offset the closures. It said removing persistently loss-making locations while adding stronger sites would allow the business to focus on stores that serve customers more effectively.