Biggest employers in the US: the 30 largest companies by headcount

This list is for sellers, recruiters and analysts who need to know which companies employ the most people and where those people work. It ranks US-headquartered companies by the headcount they reported in their latest annual report on Form 10-K, all filed between November 2025 and October 2026. SEC rules require every registrant to state "the number of persons employed" in its annual report, which makes the 10-K the one source that is comparable across companies. Each row links to its filing in the sources below.

The 30 largest US employers

Headquarters are the business address on each company's SEC filings. "About" and "more than" are the filings' own words. Two figures are our sums of numbers the filing gives separately: FedEx (about 300,000 permanent full-time plus about 230,000 permanent part-time employees) and Lowe's (about 167,000 full-time plus 109,000 part-time associates). Concentrix's figure is "employees and staff".

Just below the cut are Boeing (about 182,000), RTX (about 180,000), Comcast (about 179,000 full-time equivalents), Ford (about 169,000) and Apple (about 166,000 full-time equivalents). IBM's 2025 annual report describes its workforce but doesn't state a total headcount, so it isn't ranked. Accenture reported about 814,000 people at August 31, 2026, more than any company here except Walmart and Amazon, but it is headquartered in Dublin, Ireland.

Employers that don't file a 10-K

The largest employer in the country isn't a company. The Bureau of Labor Statistics counted 2,682,000 federal government employees in September 2026 (preliminary), including 598,400 at the US Postal Service. These large US employers report their headcount elsewhere:

The BLS and USPS figures for the Postal Service differ because they measure different things: BLS counts jobs on the payroll in the pay period that includes the 12th of the month, while USPS counts its career and pre-career employees at its fiscal year-end. Kaiser Permanente combines nonprofit health plans and hospitals with separate physician groups, and files no 10-K.

How large is large

The Census Bureau's Statistics of US Businesses for 2022 (released April 2025) counts employer firms by their total US employment:

The 500 to 9,999 row is our sum of the Census size classes in that range. SUSB counts mid-March employment at private employer firms in the US, so it leaves out government and self-employed people with no staff.

So 1,138 firms with 10,000 or more US employees employ 41.5 million people, about 31% of the private workforce. In retail the concentration is sharper: firms with 20,000 or more employees account for 7.9 million of the sector's 15.9 million jobs (49.6%). For counts of all US businesses by size, see how many businesses are in the US.

How the list is built

• What's counted. The headcount each company states in its latest 10-K, usually in the "Human capital" part of Item 1. Most include part-time workers; Target includes seasonal staff and UPS excludes temporary seasonal employees. The figures are worldwide unless the column says otherwise.
• Whose employees. Only people the company itself employs, so franchise staff are out: McDonald's counts over 150,000 people at the company and its company-operated restaurants. Marriott managed the employment of about 414,000 associates at the end of 2025, but about 266,000 of them work for hotel owners, so we count its 148,000 direct employees, which keeps it out of the top 30. Hilton gives about 182,000 people "employed or managed" at its leased and managed hotels and offices.
• Different dates. Fiscal years end in different months, so the as-of dates run from September 2025 to August 2026. Most companies round to the nearest thousand, or for Walmart the nearest 100,000.
• What's left out. Companies headquartered outside the US, privately held companies that don't publish a headcount, and government. Fortune and Forbes publish their own lists with employee counts; we didn't use them.

The US headcount, and how to find it

For most sales and hiring decisions the US number matters more than the worldwide one. Cognizant is 14th by total headcount, but 256,900 of its 351,600 employees are in India and 41,600 in North America. PepsiCo employs 125,000 of its 306,000 in the US, and Microsoft 121,000 of 223,000.

1. Read the human capital section of the 10-K. Search the filing for "employees" or the company's own word ("associates", "team members", "colleagues"). Many give a US or regional split and a full-time and part-time split.
2. Check for a published EEO-1 report. Private employers with 100 or more employees file an EEO-1 report with the EEOC each year, showing their US workforce by job category. Filings aren't public, but many large companies post theirs on their investor or sustainability pages.
3. For private companies, use state largest-employer lists and the company's own statements, and treat third-party estimates as estimates. Our guide to finding a company's employee count covers each source.

Company pages such as Walmart's headcount by year and Amazon's show how one employer's figure has moved over time.

The list by sector

Where the buying happens at employers this size

General guidance, not drawn from the filings. A company with hundreds of thousands of employees buys almost nothing as one organization. Spending sits in three places:

• Central functions with company-wide budgets: HR technology, benefits, payroll, learning, workforce management, security and IT. Expect RFPs, security reviews and supplier onboarding, and a cycle of six months or more.
• Business units and regions. Berkshire Hathaway's subsidiaries run their own businesses; Disney, Aramark and UnitedHealth report several segments with their own leaders. A division or region with 20,000 employees is often a better first customer than the parent.
• Sites. Store, distribution center, hospital and kitchen operations leaders feel the problem first and can sponsor a pilot, even if procurement signs the contract.

The useful numbers for qualifying are in the same 10-K section: how many people are hourly or part-time, how many are unionized and how many are in the US.

Worked example: a scheduling software vendor

Illustrative example. The vendor and its pricing are fictional; the workforce figures come from each company's latest 10-K.

The seller: Rota (rota.example) sells shift-scheduling software priced at an illustrative $3 per hourly or part-time worker per month. The question: which of the 30 largest employers have the biggest hourly workforce in the US, and where should Rota start?

What the filings show. Walmart says about 92% of its 1.6 million US associates are hourly, which is about 1,472,000 people. Home Depot says about 53,400 of its 472,400 associates are salaried, leaving about 419,000 hourly (89%). Dollar Tree, outside the top 30, employs 117,851 part-time associates out of 153,032 (77%). Albertsons says about 62% of its 280,000 associates are part-time, about 173,600 people.

The arithmetic. At $3 a month, Dollar Tree's 117,851 part-time associates are worth about $4.2 million a year to Rota (117,851 × $3 × 12 = $4,242,636). Even a single region of Albertsons, at an illustrative 20,000 part-time workers, is worth $720,000 a year.

The plan.

1. Rank by hourly headcount, not total headcount, using the human capital section of each 10-K.
2. Start with a region or banner. Albertsons runs 22 banners, including Safeway, Vons and Jewel-Osco, and a banner's operations team can pilot without a company-wide decision.
3. Find two contacts per account: the operations leader for the region or banner, and the workforce management or HR technology leader at headquarters who will run the security review.

Finding the regional leaders and what's changed at each banner is the slow part. Bebop researches each account in a list like this and writes a playbook with the people to contact and the angle to open with.

Next step: before you contact any of these companies, work through the enterprise account research guide to map the divisions, the buyers and the procurement steps.