Companies in Philadelphia: eds and meds, Comcast and Cencora, and 153,791 businesses across four states

This page is for anyone looking for companies in Philadelphia: job seekers, firms looking for local partners, researchers and B2B sellers working the city and its suburbs. It covers the city's largest employers from the state's own list, the metro's public headquarters, the business count by county, where to check a Philadelphia business, and a worked example in the region's biggest sector.

Philadelphia's largest employers

Pennsylvania's Department of Labor and Industry ranks the 50 largest employers in Philadelphia County each quarter from unemployment insurance records. It publishes ranks, not headcounts. The top 20 for the first quarter of 2026, with names as the state lists them:

Twelve of the top 20 are universities, health care providers or health insurers. The private companies further down include Aramark Campus (24), ACE American Insurance (27), Accenture (33), PECO Energy (36), Ernst & Young (41), URBN (48) and Wawa (49).

Public companies headquartered in the Philadelphia area

The 15 largest SEC-registered public companies whose latest 10-K gives a principal executive office in the Philadelphia metro area, by revenue in that filing:

Only three, Comcast, Aramark and Urban Outfitters, are inside the city. The rest follow the Main Line and the turnpike west and north (Conshohocken, Radnor, King of Prussia, Berwyn, West Chester, Fort Washington) or sit across the rivers in Camden, Burlington and Wilmington. Marvell's 10-K gives a Wilmington office as its principal executive office, while noting buildings it owns or operates in Santa Clara, California. Versant Media, which separated from Comcast, gives New York on its 10-K, so it isn't listed.

How many businesses are in the Philadelphia area

County Business Patterns (CBP) figures for the Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD Metro Area (CBSA 37980):

In bands: 129,709 establishments with 1 to 19 employees, 19,805 with 20 to 99 and 4,277 with 100 or more. CBP counts each location with paid employees across all sectors, leaves out the self-employed and government employers, and measures employment in the pay period including March 12, 2023.

The other counties in the metro, in New Jersey and Maryland, account for the remaining 9,211 establishments. Philadelphia County has only 19.2% of the metro's establishments but 24.3% of its jobs. Montgomery County, home to King of Prussia and Conshohocken, is nearly as big by establishment count.

What Philadelphia-area businesses do

Average pay is our calculation from CBP payroll. Health care leads on both establishments and jobs. The metro's 131 hospitals employ 163,107 people, and its 67 college and university establishments employ 90,266. Within Philadelphia County, health care accounts for 28.0% of private jobs.

How to find and check a Philadelphia business

For companies registered in Delaware or New Jersey, use those states' registries; see companies in Delaware for how Delaware's works. The statewide picture is on businesses in Pennsylvania.

Prospecting the eds and meds

Hospitals, universities and research labs buy specialized services on long cycles: equipment maintenance, lab supplies, facilities work and compliance. Large systems buy through central supply chain or research administration offices, with the lab or department head as the real decision maker.

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

Schuylkill Cold Chain (schuylkillcold.example) maintains ultra-low-temperature freezers and other lab equipment for research sites in the metro.

• Hospitals with 250 or more employees: 19 + 27 + 40 = 86.
• College and university establishments with 250 or more: 5 + 10 + 14 = 29.
• Scientific research and development establishments with 20 or more: 61 + 32 + 30 + 13 + 6 + 6 = 148.
• That's 263 sites; converting 5% a year would add about 13 service contracts.

It targets lab operations managers and research core facility directors, and times outreach to grant cycles and new building openings. Mapping which of 263 sites run freezer farms, and who manages them, is research Bebop can do for each account.

Subject: Freezer coverage at [institution]'s [building]

Hi [first name],

A single failed minus-80 freezer can cost a lab years of samples, and most service contracts in the region promise a technician the next business day.

We cover ultra-low freezers and incubators across the Philadelphia area with a four-hour response, remote temperature monitoring and quarterly preventive maintenance. Could I send a quote for the units in your core?

[Your name], Schuylkill Cold Chain

Next step: see how to research large institutions in enterprise account research.