McKesson brings in $9.4 million per employee. Microsoft keeps more profit from each.

The top of the list sells other people’s products

The ten highest revenue-per-employee figures among 1,312 large companies belong to StoneX, Gold.com, CrossAmerica Partners, Athene Holding, Valero Energy, RenaissanceRe Holdings, Cheniere Energy, Plains All American Pipeline, Phillips 66 and McKesson. Not one of them is a technology company. They are traders, dealers, distributors, insurers, refiners, a pipeline and a gas exporter: businesses whose revenue includes the full price of the barrel, the bar or the pill they pass along.

A refiner books the full price of the fuel it sells, and pays for the crude oil that goes into it. Valero took in $12.5 million per employee in 2025 and kept 2.6 cents of operating profit on each dollar. The median refiner on the list brings in $5.7 million per employee. The drug wholesalers work the same way, at even thinner margins. McKesson describes its main business in one line:

“Our North American Pharmaceutical segment distributes branded, generic, specialty, biosimilar and over-the-counter (“OTC”) pharmaceutical drugs, and other healthcare-related products to customers in the United States (“U.S.”) and Canada.” McKesson annual report

McKesson kept 1.5 cents of operating profit on each dollar of revenue; Cencora, $6.3 million per employee in revenue, kept 0.8 cents. Their people are not unproductive. They are moving goods whose value was created somewhere else, and revenue counts the goods.

The typical software company sits below the middle

If revenue per employee measured how productive people are, software would top it. The median software company here brought in $437,000 per employee, below the $498,000 median for the whole list, and below drugmakers ($880,000), electric utilities ($1.3 million) and insurers ($1.4 million).

Software’s revenue has nothing to swell it. There is no crude oil inside a subscription, no carton of pills. What a software company sells is the work of the people it employs to build and sell the product, so the ratio shows that work at its true size. The giants stand out because their products sell at a scale few companies reach: Meta at $2.5 million per employee, Alphabet at $2.1 million, Microsoft at $1.5 million. The industry’s middle looks like everyone else’s.

1. Refiners$5.7 millionmedian of 11; $119,000 operating profit per employee
2. Oil and gas producers$4.9 millionmedian of 12; $806,000 operating profit per employee
3. Property and casualty insurers$1.4 millionmedian of 27
4. Electric utilities$1.3 millionmedian of 29; $279,000 operating profit per employee
5. Drugmakers$880,000median of 20; $124,000 operating profit per employee
6. Chipmakers$513,000median of 33; $52,000 operating profit per employee
7. Software companies$437,000median of 63; $36,000 operating profit per employee
8. Banks$435,000median of 41
9. Hotel companies$220,000median of 13; $38,000 operating profit per employee
10. Restaurant companies$69,000median of 16; $4,000 operating profit per employee

The spread from the top of that list to the bottom is the point. Oil and gas producers bring in $4.9 million per employee at the median; restaurant companies, $69,000. Neither number says whose people work harder. One business pumps a commodity out of the ground with a small crew; the other cooks and serves every meal by hand.

The highest earners hire someone else to build the product

Re-sort the list by operating profit per employee and only one company passes Nvidia: Cheniere Energy, an exporter of liquefied natural gas, at $5.3 million. Nvidia kept $3.1 million of operating profit per employee in the year to January 2026, on revenue of $5.1 million a head. Its own headcount sentence says what those people do:

“As of the end of fiscal year 2026, we had approximately 42,000 employees in 38 countries; 31,000 were engaged in research and development and 11,000 were engaged in sales, marketing, operations, and administrative positions.” Nvidia annual report

The factories belong to someone else:

“We utilize a fabless and contracting manufacturing strategy, whereby we employ and partner with key suppliers for all phases of the manufacturing process, including wafer fabrication, assembly, testing, and packaging.” Nvidia annual report

Apple, at $2.5 million in revenue and $802,000 in operating profit per employee, has the same shape:

“A significant majority of the Company’s manufacturing is performed in whole or in part by outsourcing partners located primarily in China mainland, India, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam, in addition to sourcing from partners and facilities located in the U.S.” Apple annual report

The people who fabricate a Nvidia chip or assemble an iPhone are on other companies’ payrolls, so they are missing from the count. That is a strategy, not a trick of arithmetic. Both companies chose to own the design and rent the manufacturing, and the ratio rewards the choice. It also hides the risk that comes with it: a company that rents its factories depends on whoever owns them.

Costco brings in more than twice as much per employee as Walmart

Costco took in $854,000 per employee in the year to August 2026; Walmart, $340,000 in the year to January 2026. Both sell groceries and televisions in very large stores. The difference is a decision Costco made about what to carry:

“We operate membership warehouses and e-commerce sites based on the concept that offering low prices on a limited selection of nationally-branded and private-label products in a wide range of categories will produce high sales volumes and rapid inventory turnover.” Costco annual report

“We carry less than 4,000 active stock keeping units (SKUs) per warehouse in our core warehouse business, significantly less than other broadline retailers.” Costco annual report

Fewer items turn over faster, and each employee handles more dollars of sales. Neither company keeps much of those dollars: 3.9 cents of operating profit on each dollar at Costco, 4.2 cents at Walmart. Here the ratio is doing its honest job, comparing two companies that make money the same way and showing which one chose the leaner store.

Marriott counts people who work in other owners’ hotels

Marriott ranks 1,296 of 1,312, at $63,000 per employee. Its headcount sentence holds the explanation:

“At year-end 2025, Marriott managed the employment of approximately 414,000 associates.” Marriott annual report

The word that matters is “managed.” Marriott runs hotels for their owners, and the cost of running them is billed back, without a profit on top:

“Under our agreements with hotel owners and certain other counterparties, we are entitled to be reimbursed for certain costs we incur on behalf of their properties, with no added mark-up.” Marriott annual report

“During 2025, the Company recognized $870 million of general and administrative expenses and $19,503 million of reimbursed expenses.” Marriott annual report

That is $19.5 billion of costs paid for owners and billed back to them, inside a company with $26.2 billion of revenue. Hilton counts the same way: “As of December 31, 2025, we employed or managed approximately 182,000 individuals at our leased and managed hotels and corporate offices around the world.” It sits at $66,000 per employee. Airbnb, which sells stays in its hosts’ listings, comes in at $1.5 million. Three companies that sell nights away from home, sorted by the ratio into who signs the paychecks.

At the bottom, the people are the product

The lowest figure on the list belongs to WNS; the next lowest, at $22,000 per employee across 455,000 people, to Concentrix. What it sells:

“We design, build, and run fully integrated, end-to-end solutions including customer experience (“CX”) process optimization, technology innovation and design engineering, front- and back-office automation, analytics, and business transformation services for clients in five primary industry verticals.” Concentrix annual report

Customer service and back-office work are sold, in the end, by the hour of human effort. The bottom ten are Laureate Education, Advantage Solutions, Arcos Dorados, Cracker Barrel, TTEC Holdings, Yum China Holdings, Genpact, ExlService Holdings, Concentrix and WNS: outsourcing and call-center firms, restaurant chains, a marketing-services firm and a university operator. A low ratio here is the business model working as designed. A company that sells its people’s time cannot have revenue far above the cost of that time, and the median restaurant company keeps $4,000 of operating profit per employee.

25 companies employ 13,027,384 people

Walmart alone states 2,100,000; Amazon, 1,576,000; then Accenture, JD.com, FedEx, Home Depot and UPS. Stores, trucks, kitchens and call centers: work done by hand, one customer at a time. The median revenue per employee among these 25 is $252,000, against $498,000 for the whole list, because their size is measured in people.

All 1,312, A to Z