Businesses in Pennsylvania: the state's own top 50 employers, its biggest headquarters and 307,065 workplaces

This page is for job seekers, suppliers, researchers and B2B sellers planning a territory that runs from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh. It starts with the state's own list of its largest employers, then the biggest headquarters, the full business count, and how to check and prospect a business.

Pennsylvania's largest employers

The Department of Labor and Industry's Center for Workforce Information and Analysis ranks the state's 50 largest employers each quarter from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, the reports employers file for unemployment insurance. It publishes ranks, not headcounts. The top 25 for the first quarter of 2026, with federal and state government each combined into one entry and names as the state lists them:

Ranks 26 to 50 include Comcast Cablevision, Sheetz, Bayada Home Health Care, Wegmans, East Penn Manufacturing and Aramark Campus. Hospitals and universities fill much of the list, and grocers are unusually prominent. Several of the biggest private employers, Vanguard, Wawa, Sheetz and East Penn, don't publish financial results, so they'd be missing from any ranking built from SEC filings.

The biggest companies headquartered in Pennsylvania

The 20 largest SEC-listed companies whose latest 10-K gives a Pennsylvania principal executive office, by revenue in that filing:

PNC's figure is total revenue (net interest income plus noninterest income) and PPL's is operating revenues. Kraft Heinz names Pittsburgh as its principal executive office and describes Pittsburgh and Chicago as co-headquarters. Cencora is a drug wholesaler, so its revenue includes the full price of the medicines it distributes, which is why it dwarfs everyone else.

Pittsburgh and its suburbs hold ten of the 20 headquarters, including Dick's in Coraopolis and Viatris in Canonsburg. The Philadelphia region has seven, five of them in the suburbs from Conshohocken to West Chester. The other three are Air Products and PPL in Allentown and Hershey in Hershey. See companies in Philadelphia and companies in Pittsburgh for each metro.

How many businesses are in Pennsylvania

In bands: 257,465 establishments with 1 to 19 employees, 41,074 with 20 to 99 and 8,526 with 100 or more. These are County Business Patterns (CBP) counts of locations with paid employees, across all sectors, for the pay period including March 12, 2023. They leave out the self-employed and entities with no payroll, which is why the Department of State's 2.4 million registered companies is so much larger.

Where Pennsylvania's businesses are

Philadelphia and its four Pennsylvania suburban counties (Montgomery, Bucks, Chester and Delaware) together have 104,481 establishments, 34.0% of the state. Allegheny has the most of any single county. Lehigh County's 23.2 employees per site is close to Philadelphia's; Lehigh Valley Hospital Center ranks 20th on the state's Top 50.

What Pennsylvania businesses do

Average pay is our calculation from CBP payroll. Health care is the state's biggest employer by far: 1,142,207 jobs, or 20.0% of the CBP total against 15.8% across the US. Its 307 hospitals alone employ 310,311 people, and 81 of them have 1,000 or more employees. Management of companies, the Census category for head offices, has 2,190 establishments averaging 100.4 employees each.

How to check a Pennsylvania business

The county Top 50 files rank the largest employers in each of the 67 counties, including private companies that publish nothing else.

Prospecting Pennsylvania's health care providers

Hospitals and nursing homes buy linen, food service, staffing and repairs steadily and locally. Large hospitals buy through system supply chain teams; nursing homes through an administrator.

Illustrative example. The company, rates and results are fictional, to show the method.

Susquehanna Linen (susquehannalinen.example) launders and delivers linen for health care facilities from a plant near Harrisburg.

• Hospital establishments with 100 or more employees: 50 + 59 + 54 + 81 = 244.
• Nursing care facilities with 50 to 249 employees: 219 + 223 = 442.
• It assumes 35% are within its delivery radius: about 240 sites.
• Converting 5% a year would add about 12 accounts.

For hospitals it contacts the environmental services director and the system's supply chain lead; for nursing homes, the administrator. Sorting 686 sites by distance, ownership and current provider is the slow part, and Bebop can do that research for each one.

Subject: Linen at [facility name]

Hi [first name],

Short linen deliveries are one of the most common complaints in nursing homes, and they usually come from a provider running routes out of Philadelphia or Pittsburgh.

We run daily deliveries from our plant near Harrisburg to facilities in [county], with par levels set by unit. Could I send a quote based on your bed count?

[Your name], Susquehanna Linen

Next step: see the factory side of the state in manufacturing companies in Pennsylvania.