The largest employers in Phoenix: the city's 2025 list, what changed since 2016 and who employs everyone else

This page is for job seekers, economic developers, journalists and B2B sellers who want to know who employs the most people in the Phoenix area. It uses the list the City of Phoenix publishes in its annual financial report, explains what those numbers count, compares them with 2016, and adds federal job counts for Maricopa County and the workforces Phoenix's public companies report.

Phoenix's ten largest employers

The City of Phoenix publishes its principal employers in Table 22 of its Annual Comprehensive Financial Report for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2025. The figures come from the Phoenix Business Journal Book of Lists and, as the city notes, they count each employer's Arizona employees, not only those in Phoenix.

The shares are the city's own: each employer's count divided by total nonfarm employment in the Phoenix metro, seasonally adjusted. Because the counts are statewide, the University of Arizona, based in Tucson, makes a Phoenix list, and Banner's figure covers all its Arizona sites.

What changed since 2016

The same table shows the top ten nine years earlier:

Three things stand out. Amazon went from off the list to second, with 40,000 Arizona employees. Health care grew: HonorHealth and Dignity Health joined Banner. And the 2016 list's banks and Intel, all large Valley employers then, no longer make the top ten, while the State of Arizona is the only employer that shrank.

Who employs everyone else

The Bureau of Labor Statistics' Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages counts every job covered by unemployment insurance. Maricopa County, which holds nearly all of the metro, averaged 2,289,324 covered jobs in 2025:

Government employs 9.6% of the county's workers. Among private industries, health care and social assistance is the largest by far:

For the whole metro, the QCEW counts 2,369,300 covered jobs. The Census Bureau's County Business Patterns, which covers private establishments, counted 114,586 in the Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler metro in 2023, with 2,080,244 employees: 109,863 establishments in Maricopa County and 4,723 in Pinal. Only 153 had 1,000 or more employees and 236 had 500 to 999, so the employers on the city's list are a small group running many sites each.

The biggest workforces at Phoenix-headquartered companies

None of the private employers in the city's top ten is a public company headquartered in Arizona. Phoenix's public companies report their own headcounts in their 10-Ks, company-wide rather than in Arizona, which makes them a different measure from the table above:

For the same companies ranked by revenue, see the largest companies in Phoenix.

Selling to the Valley's largest employers

The top ten fall into four groups, and each buys differently:

1. Health systems (Banner, HonorHealth, Dignity) buy clinical supplies through group purchasing and value analysis committees, and staffing, facilities and workforce programs through their own supply chain and HR teams. Our guide to selling to hospitals covers the process.
2. Government and universities (the State, ASU, the University of Arizona, the City) buy through posted solicitations and registered vendor lists, so supplier registration comes before outreach.
3. Retail and logistics (Amazon, Walmart, Fry's) buy centrally at headquarters outside Arizona; local sites rarely hold budget, so start with the corporate function.
4. The long tail. Below the top ten, the 389 establishments with 500 or more employees include plants, distribution centers, call centers and campuses where a site leader does control spending.

Illustrative example. The company, rates and results are fictional; the employer figures are from the City of Phoenix list.

Valley Backup Care (valleybackupcare.example) offers employers backup child and elder care, priced per employee per year.

• The six private employers in the top ten (Banner, Amazon, Walmart, Fry's, HonorHealth and Dignity) employ 178,493 Arizonans.
• It sets aside Amazon, Walmart and Fry's, whose benefits are set at national headquarters, leaving the three health systems with 80,514.
• At $12 per employee per year, a single 16,969-employee system is worth about $204,000 annually; one win pays for the year's sales effort.
• It targets chief people officers and nursing workforce leaders, and times outreach to late winter, ahead of benefits decisions for the next plan year.

Finding the HR and nursing workforce leaders at each system, and what each says publicly about retention, is the research Bebop does for each account.

Subject: Keeping [System]'s nurses on shift when child care falls through

Hi [first name],

With [number] Arizona employees, [System] loses shifts every week to a closed daycare or a sick parent, and nursing feels it first.

We give employees backup child and elder care across the Valley, booked in an app, with usage reported by department. Could I send what a plan for [number] employees would cost, ahead of next year's benefits decisions?

[Your name], Valley Backup Care

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