As Labor Market Softens, Index Shows Top Employers Pay and Promote More Than Double Their Peers For Same Jobs

By Business Wire On Oct 28, 2024

The Burning Glass Institute, the Schultz Family Foundation and Harvard Business School’s Managing the Future of Work Project released the 2024 American Opportunity Index, a groundbreaking ranking that reveals which large U.S. companies are doing the best to advance the careers of their employees and grow the middle class in an evolving labor market.

“A strong commitment to employee well-being and professional growth fosters an environment where all employees can thrive – and we’re proud to have accomplished that at Lumen.”

In its third year, the latest Index finds that many firms beyond the technology and financial-services industries, including those in the energy and resource-related sectors, are succeeding at providing pathways to opportunity for workers. Overall, companies from more than 30 sectors are represented in the Index’s Top 100 Employers of Choice list.

Topping this year’s ranking are: W.W. Grainger, Inc., Costco Wholesale, Capital One Financial, Meta Platforms, ServiceNow, J.B. Hunt Transport Services, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, MetLife and Bank of America.

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The Index finds that a majority of studied companies did not increase hiring of early career and non-college workers in 2023, and 60% of firms on the list decreased promotion opportunities. As economic uncertainties impact the labor market, the Index points the way to firms that are outperforming competitors in creating meaningful opportunities for workers to get hired, be paid well and advance in their careers.

“I have long believed that when you invest in your people, you’re investing in the future of your company. That belief guided my family foundation’s support of the 2024 American Opportunity Index,” said Starbucks chairman emeritus Howard Schultz, co-founder of the Schultz Family Foundation. “It is crucial that business leaders and corporate directors look inward and examine how effectively they are nurturing and developing their people.”

The American Opportunity Index is fundamentally different from every other measure of employer quality: It is not based on corporate-submitted data or worker surveys but on an independent, comprehensive data analysis of the career trajectories of more than 5 million employees at 395 of America’s largest companies. The Index measures how well firms promote, pay, hire and retain their employees based on what really happened to them over a five-year period.

The Index is a valuable tool that equips employers with new data to benchmark their success versus peers and identify areas for improvement. The project is based on the premise that when employers invest in unlocking the full potential of their people—by providing good jobs and ample opportunities for advancement—their businesses do better.

“When workers rise, companies rise with them,” said Matt Sigelman, President of the Burning Glass Institute and one of the architects of the Index. “The 2024 American Opportunity Index offers a critical benchmark for companies to assess how they foster opportunities and drive mobility, providing a data-driven yardstick for identifying the practices that build value in the workforce. By offering good jobs and opportunities for growth, top-ranked employers aren’t just supporting their employers, they’re building a stronger foundation for the future.”

The Index also provides critical new transparency for workers, revealing which companies and industries are providing the best wages, chances for promotions and job opportunities for first-time job seekers and those without college degrees.

Among key findings from this year’s Index:

Employees at the 100-best firms on the Index’s pay metric earn, on average, 130% more for the same job than those who work for bottom-100 pay firms.
Those at top-100 firms for the internal promotion metric are 150% more likely to be promoted than their counterparts at bottom-100 firms.
Top 100 employers in hiring are 180% more likely to hire workers without a college degree, creating greater opportunity for entry level workers.
Companies in the energy and resource-related sectors—oil and gas, utilities, and metals and materials—had the largest average gains in the Index this year, proving resilience even as more prominent sectors like technology and retail struggled.
Wages across sectors are growing, but workers in the consumer goods and industrial distribution sectors saw the greatest increases.
A new measure that assesses how well firms did compared to their own prior-year performance finds that only 80 of 395 firms increased promotion opportunities, while 240 firms had some level of decrease.
The same measure finds that a plurality of companies–174–decreased their hiring of people who either lack college degrees or meaningful previous work experience.

Joe Fuller, a Professor at Harvard Business School and co-head of its Managing the Future of Work Project, observed, “Our research demonstrates that management practices unlock opportunity for workers. The leading companies in the Index come from a wide array of industries–distribution, retail, banking, technology, consumer products, logistics. Opportunity doesn’t rest in specific industries or locations. It’s a function of companies making choices that advance the interest of their workers and implementing them.”

The American Opportunity Index is a joint project of the Schultz Family Foundation, Burning Glass Institute, and The Harvard Business School Managing the Future of Work Project. The Index is a nonprofit project for the public to help workers make informed decisions about the best places to start a career.

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