The Where You Work Matters List is an independent rating of how well the largest U.S. employers are creating high-quality jobs. The list provides businesses with critical insight to drive business performance and employee growth. It also provides workers and employers with essential data to make informed decisions in a transforming labor market.
The Where You Work Matters List is a groundbreaking assessment of how well major U.S. employers enable workers to advance in their careers, receive leading wages and be retained in their roles.
The List is based on an empirical analysis of the real-world outcomes of more than 12 million American workers across 1,763 employers. Top-performing companies will receive Platinum and Gold overall awards when the List is released on March 10.
In a time of rapid change and mounting economic instability, the List illuminates the companies with highly effective workforce strategies which provide them with a differentiated business advantage toward innovation, productivity and brand loyalty.
This List will provide an objective way for firms to benchmark how well they perform overall and by occupation versus competitors, enabling them to assess the impact of their internal pay, mobility and retention practices.
For Platinum and Gold firms, the List provides essential external validation of the investments they have made in their workforce, strengthening the signal to employees, job seekers, investors and the broader market about what it means to lead on job quality today.
The List, powered by the American Opportunity Index, is a joint project of the Burning Glass Institute and the Schultz Family Foundation. The methodology was developed in partnership with the Managing the Future of Work Project at Harvard Business School.
Unlike other measures of employer performance, the List does not rely on corporate surveys, participation or disclosures. It is a nonprofit, public-interest endeavor. There are no fees to use our data or recognition.
We created the List because we believe all business stakeholders—from those in the C-suite and boardroom to the middle managers and frontline workers—should have the same information about which companies are investing in their workforce, and how those investments show up in both worker and business outcomes.
In addition to rating companies on their overall performance, the List will provide data on 55,000 occupations across those employers.
Companies recognized as top employers on the List provide, on average, a profoundly different experience for their workers. Across a basket of occupations, employees at Platinum-badged firms on the List are:
- 32 percent more likely to stay for more than three years,
- 102 percent more likely to be promoted internally within five years, and
- 61 percent more likely to earn more for the same roles compared to employees at firms that do not have a Platinum or Gold overall badge.
Importantly, these outcomes apply to companies across sectors, from hospitality and retail to manufacturing and business services.
We begin by collecting hundreds of millions of data points about how workers report their career progression and compensation on sites such as LinkedIn, Indeed, Glassdoor and dozens of other places where workers share resumes and career information.
That information is analyzed using proprietary algorithms to group workers into occupational clusters by company. For many companies, we have statistically sufficient data on dozens of unique occupations.
We then assess corporate performance, starting at the occupational level, using three distinct models for how employers can create high-quality jobs. At the company level, employers will receive recognition for their overall performance, and for their across-the-board performance in creating strong Early-Career, Growth and Stability jobs.
The List includes all employers—publicly traded companies, private companies and nonprofit corporations—for which there is sufficient worker data to generate statistically significant analysis.
Business performance data is clear: A company’s workforce strategy is directly connected to a company’s business strategy. As AI advancements and economic pressures create unpredictability, the List reveals the companies that are implementing and investing in a workforce strategy that aligns with their overall business objectives.
We specifically designed the List to fill a key void in the marketplace: to equip employers with new data to help them benchmark and celebrate their success in building talent, and flag areas for improvement.
The List is rooted in a fundamental belief that when employers invest in unlocking the full potential of their workers, it’s not just workers that do better. Businesses do better.
The List will be released on March 10.
