The Where You Work Matters List is an unprecedented, independent rating of how well the largest U.S. employers are creating high-quality jobs.
The Where You Work Matters List is an unprecedented, 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.
We recognize the companies doing best overall at creating jobs that enable workers to advance in their careers, receive leading wages and be retained in their roles. Most significantly, the List shows how well employers do this by specific occupations.
This data provides an objective way for firms to benchmark how well they perform across occupations versus competitors, enabling them to assess the impact of their internal pay, mobility and retention practices. The List also validates the investments they have made in their workforce using an independent, objective assessment.
Which are open to entry-level workers and provide skills and training for internal or external advancement.
Which provide opportunities to rise internally and externally, especially in firms where leaders rise internally.
Which provide leading pay and retention.
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 Harvard Business School Project on Managing the Future of Work.
The List is based on an objective, empirical assessment of more than 12 million American workers at 1,750 employers. We collect hundreds of millions of data points about how those workers report their career progression and compensation on sites such as LinkedIn, Indeed, Glassdoor and dozens of other places where workers share career information.
Unlike other measures of employer performance, the List does not rely on corporate surveys, participation or disclosures. It is a philanthropic project in the public interest. Companies cannot opt in or out of the List, and there is no pay for play.
We include all employers—including publicly traded companies, private companies and non-profit corporations—for which there is sufficient worker data to generate statistically significant analysis. We look across all occupations in the U.S. economy.
The List features an analysis of nearly 55,000 jobs across 1,750 employers. We evaluate performance in two complementary ways: by rating specific occupations within each company, and by assessing each company’s overall outcomes.
At the occupation level, the List identifies roles that are top performers across three distinct models for how employers can grow talent:
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. Top-performing companies will be awarded Platinum and Gold badges.
As AI advancements and economic pressures impact the labor market, the List reveals the companies that are doing best at building and retaining talent—a key advantage at a time when external hiring ebbs.
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 who do better. Businesses do better.
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