The largest employers in California: the state's 2026 list and what it leaves out

This page is for job seekers, economic developers, journalists and B2B sellers who want to know where California's big workforces are. It starts with the state's own list, explains what that list measures, then adds the two views it can't give you: employment by type of employer, and the biggest California-based companies by headcount.

California's largest employers: the EDD list

The California Employment Development Department's Labor Market Information Division publishes Major Employers in California, extracted from the America's Labor Market Information System (ALMIS) Employer Database, 2026 2nd edition, with employer information from Data Axle (page last updated July 2026). These are the top 30 of its 50 ranked entries, with names as the list gives them:

The rest of the 50 include Intel's Santa Clara and Folsom sites, Broadcom in Irvine, Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Sony Pictures, Walt Disney Co in Burbank and an Amazon fulfillment center in Fresno. The EDD also publishes a major employers list for each county.

How to read the EDD list

Four things to keep in mind before you quote it:

1. It ranks locations, not organizations. The University of California appears eight times in the top 21 because each campus or unit is a separate record. Organizations spread across many mid-sized sites, such as Kaiser Permanente or Amazon, rank lower than their total workforce would suggest.
2. Sizes are bands, estimated by Data Axle. The EDD says the data come from Data Axle, a private firm whose staff compile records from phone books, annual reports, public records and calls to companies, and that the EDD can't alter them. Within a band the order isn't meaningful.
3. Some rows look wrong. "Vision X," a call center on Wilshire Boulevard, is listed at over 10,000 employees, and "Prime Materials" in San Jose at 8,000 to 8,999 with no street address. The county lists have more oddities. Treat any single row as a lead to check, not a fact.
4. An airport is many employers. LAX's entry counts a site where airlines, contractors and city staff all work.

None of the data come from the confidential payroll reports employers file with the EDD, which are never published by name.

Who employs California's workers

The Bureau of Labor Statistics' Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) counts every job covered by unemployment insurance. Its 2025 annual averages for California show how much of the workforce is public:

Local government (school districts, counties, cities and special districts) is the biggest block, which is why county administrations, sheriffs and police departments fill the EDD list. QCEW counts more jobs than the Census Bureau's County Business Patterns, which covers private employers only: CBP found 16,405,436 employees at 1,029,689 California establishments in 2023, and just 1,181 of those establishments had 1,000 or more employees.

The biggest California-based companies by workforce

Companies report headcount for the whole company, not by state. These are the largest employers among California-headquartered public companies, from each one's latest 10-K:

Disney and Wells Fargo also report how much of their workforce is in the US: about 172,000 people and about 76%. For revenue rankings of the same companies, see businesses in California; for national comparisons, see the largest employers in the US.

Using the list to sell into large California workforces

A large worksite is a buying point for anything sold per head or per site: food service, transportation, uniforms, benefits, safety training, facilities maintenance. Three practical steps:

1. Find who controls the site's budget. At a university campus, a medical center or a military base, the site often buys for itself; at a corporate campus, facilities and workplace services may be run from headquarters or through an outsourced facilities manager.
2. Check whether it's public. Government sites, including UC campuses, the sheriff's departments and the bases on this list, buy through posted solicitations and approved vendor lists, so registration comes before prospecting. Our guide to selling to government covers the process.
3. Confirm the headcount. Use the county list, the organization's own reports or a site visit, because a Data Axle band can be years out of date.

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

Coastline Commute (coastline.example) runs employer shuttle programs and wants Santa Clara County sites with thousands of workers.

• From the state and county EDD lists, it picks the corporate campuses: Alphabet, Cisco, eBay, Applied Materials, Intel, NVIDIA and others on the Santa Clara County list.
• It skips NASA Ames and the VA medical center, which buy through federal contracts it isn't set up for.
• Its pitch is per seat: a site with 8,000 employees where 5% ride a shuttle needs about 400 seats a day.
• It looks for the workplace or transportation lead at each company, not the site's facilities team, because shuttle programs are usually bought centrally.

Bebop can find the people who run workplace and commute programs at each company on the list and draft the first message.

Subject: Getting [Company]'s [city] campus to the office

Hi [first name],

With [Company] asking more people to be in [city] several days a week, the commute is often the complaint that comes up first.

We run shuttle programs for Santa Clara County campuses of 5,000 people or more, from Caltrain and BART stations and nearby neighborhoods, priced per seat. Would ridership numbers from a similar campus help you size a pilot?

[Your name], Coastline Commute

Next step: see how big organizations split their buying in enterprise account research.