December 17, 2005
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That's, Er, Quite a Payroll
Okay, quiz time: What’s the country’s top private employer (in terms of number of employees)?
Answer after the break.
It’s Wal-Mart (yeah, big surprise) with… 1.6 million employees. My gosh. Here’s the top ten:
- Wal-Mart — 1,600,000
- McDonald’s — 438,000
- United Parcel Service — 384,000
- I.B.M. — 329,001
- Home Depot — 325,000
- Ford — 324,864
- General Motors — 324,000
- General Electric — 307,000
- Target — 300,000
- Citigroup — 290,500
I don’t know about you, but I would not have guessed that UPS, I.B.M. or Home Depot (?!) were so high up there.
Cribbed from the New York Times.
Comments
Two things you sometimes forget about Home Depot are that 1) like Wal-Mart, those stores are huge, requiring lots of employees for each store, and 2) also like Wal-Mart, Atlanta-based Home Depot is way more ubiquitous in both the south and exurban parts of the country as opposed to, say, McDonald's, which is pretty evenly distributed (but has much fewer employees in each store).
Retail, man. Before you know it, we won't actually make anything in this country at all any more.