Which companies and industries generate the most profit per employee?

One of the most common ways of measuring a company's success is their profit or loss over a period of time, but which of the world's biggest companies are generating the most profit per employee? Companies that are successful by this barometer are ones that are getting the best returns from every worker on their books.

In 2020 we revealed the companies and sectors with the highest profit per employee, but since then a lot has changed in the world. The landscape of business has changed due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, consequently, there has been a lot of change in the companies that generate the most profit per employee.

Companies

The profit per employee for each company is calculated by dividing a company’s profit over the last twelve months by the number of full-time registered employees. A high profit per employee amount suggests that the company is efficient at using its staff to generate success, therefore it is a highly useful metric in determining a company’s effectiveness.

There were 914 major companies in the study, and out of these the majority made profit per employee in the last year, 676 had a positive ratio compared to just 238 which made a loss per employee. The average amount of profit per employee was $10,215, this was a result of average profits of £960.44 million shared between 37,325 employees.

A number of the world's best-known companies featured in the upper echelons of the rankings; Visa, Apple, Alphabet, Netflix, and Microsoft all ranked in the top 35. Meanwhile, other huge names such as; Hilton, AT&T, Boeing, Uber, and Disney all made losses per employee.

The Companies with the Highest Profit per Employee Ranked

FILTER BY SECTOR:

Rank

Company

Sector

Profit

NUMBER OF Employees

Profit per Employee
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Sectors

To discover the profit per employee of each sector an average figure was taken of the profit of every company in each sector, as well as the number of employees. The average number of employees was divided by the average profit to discover an average profit per employee for each sector.

Financial companies produce the most profit per employee, on average these companies produce $78,073 per employee, which is around $60,000 higher than the average. Only just behind are technology companies which generated $77,961 profit per employee on average.

At the other end of the spectrum, energy companies had a huge loss of $78,123 per employee. They were one of only three sectors that had a negative profit/loss ratio per employee in the past year, with the others being the transportation and hospitality sectors.

The Sectors with the Highest Revenue per Employee Ranked

Rank

Sector

Average Profit

Average Number of Employees

Average Profit Per Employee
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Methodology

All data sourced from the Fortune 500 list, with profits and revenue per employee calculated by dividing each company’s annual profits and revenue by their number of employees.

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