Introducing The 2023 American Opportunity Index

Dear Friends,?

Today we are thrilled to unveil the 2023 American Opportunity Index – a groundbreaking ranking that reveals how well America’s largest companies are investing in their most valuable asset – their employees – to drive business performance and advance individual employee’s careers.

We partnered with the The Burning Glass Institute and Harvard Business School's Project on Managing the Future of Work to launch the Index with the goal of raising awareness about the critical role companies play in creating opportunity and upward mobility for American workers. By arming boardrooms and c-suites with data about what is actually happening to their employees, our hope is to change corporate practice so that more American workers, especially those without college degrees, can rise into jobs that provide financial security and the ability to realize one’s full potential. The Index demonstrates that when companies invest in their people – by providing good jobs and opportunities for advancement – they are investing in the future of their business.

The Index was conceived by the Foundation and the Burning Glass Institute to provide a valuable new tool to boost economic mobility. This project is inspired by Sheri’s lifelong passion to connect young people with opportunities and by Howard’s experience building Starbucks into a company that has served as a career launching pad for millions of people. The Index is the only measure of employer quality evaluating what really happens to workers at America’s largest employers over time. It is?unprecedented in this approach:?based not on corporate surveys but on an independent, big-data analysis of the career trajectories of nearly 5 million workers from 2018 to 2022, drawn from how they report changes in their work history on social media and online resume platforms, as well as comprehensive salary and job-posting data. ?Topping this year’s ranking are 可口可乐公司 , The J.M. Smucker Co. , 固安捷 , PNC , ServiceNow , Meta , Capital One , 美国银行 , Costco Wholesale , and Intuit . By recognizing top-performing companies that are creating opportunity for their employees, we seek to inspire others to follow their example. ? This year’s Index has been expanded to assess 400 of the largest U.S. companies who publicly report their financial performance. All firms are rated across multiple metrics and by sector. The highest-scoring 100 firms overall are recognized as top employers, and companies are also ranked in five ways:

• Hiring:?How well do companies hire people without degrees and those with little experience?
• Pay:?How well do companies pay their employees and increase their compensation over time?
• Promotion:?How well do companies move people up and?prepare them for better jobs elsewhere?
• Parity:?How well do companies move all people up, regardless of race or gender??
• Culture:?How well do companies retain their employees and build their careers?

The American Opportunity Index reveals?several powerful insights:

1. Corporate practice has a major impact on workers. Employees of higher performing companies on the Index have remarkably different career trajectories – in terms of promotion, pay, and retention, among other key metrics.
2. Driving better outcomes for workers helps companies, too. Being in the top quartile of Retention vs. the bottom quartile can add approximately a half-point to the bottom line — between $101 million and $424 million for the average Fortune 500 company — as firms benefit from reduced costs associated with attrition.?
3. Promotion is a powerful lever for boosting employee retention. Companies know that retaining their workers improves productivity and business performance. Having a strong track record of promotion is almost as important at driving retention as pay itself.
4. Promotion and parity often – but not always – go hand in hand. Companies that do well at moving employees up might not move up everyone with parity. Firms that want to advance workers fairly must be purposeful in their approach to advancing women, as well as Black and Hispanic workers.
5. Companies have considerable control over their performance. Competitors in the same industries with similar workforces and business models can have very different results based on how they manage talent.

The Index is intended to help companies benchmark their performance, set data-driven goals, and test new practices against a yardstick of real-world outcomes.?Workers and their advocates, in turn, can use the Index in job searches to identify firms that most align with their values and goals. In recognizing the companies where workers and firms thrive symbiotically, and showing areas where each company can continue to improve, the Index seeks to spark a new focus on how the private sector can create greater opportunity, accessible to all. Explore the Index and read the full report at?www.AmericanOpportunityIndex.org. You can also read about it in today's edition of?The Wall Street Journal here.

Thank you,

Howard Schultz

co-founder, Schultz Family Foundation

Sheri Schultz

co-founder and chair, Schultz Family Foundation