New Employer Ratings Reveal Where Workers Actually Get Ahead — Role by Role

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SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Mar 24, 2026--

A new national rating released today offers the clearest picture yet of where workers actually get ahead in their careers – and shows that opportunity often varies dramatically depending on the specific job someone holds within a company.

The first-ever Where You Work Matters List is an independent rating revealing how well 1,750 major U.S. employers are creating jobs that enable workers to build their careers. Assembled by the Schultz Family Foundation and the Burning Glass Institute in partnership with the Harvard Business School Project on Managing the Future of Work, Where You Work Matters is based on an empirical analysis of the real-world outcomes of more than 12 million American workers and rates the performance of nearly 55,000 occupations across the assessed companies – data that has never before been publicly available at this scale.

“The Where You Work Matters data project is a critical contribution in understanding which companies in America are best at creating opportunities for workers,” said Howard Schultz, co-founder of the Schultz Family Foundation. “Transparent information around how companies pay, promote and retain their workforce on a role-by-role basis will enable a better marketplace in America.”

Measuring Opportunity Where It Actually Happens: In the Job

Unlike traditional “best employer” lists that rely on employee surveys or company self-reporting, this analysis tracks how workers fare after joining a company, measuring changes in pay, mobility, and retention role-by-role. These role-level assessments are then aggregated to identify employers that create the strongest outcomes for their workers overall.

“This initiative gives employers a clear picture of what ‘good’ looks like for each role,” said Matt Sigelman, President of the Burning Glass Institute. “That insight can help companies strengthen career pathways and design jobs that create greater opportunity.”

Employers gain the ability to benchmark their performance with unprecedented precision. For each role in their workforce, organizations can now identify where they are ahead and where improvement is needed for each area of pay, promotion, and retention. Meanwhile, for the first time, workers can see which companies provide the strongest outcomes, not just overall, but for specific roles, with companies assessed against three distinct categories:

• Early-career jobs, which are open to entry-level workers and provide skills and training for internal or external advancement;
• Growth jobs, which provide opportunities to rise internally and externally, especially in firms where leaders are developed from within; and
• Stability jobs, which offer leading pay and see strong employee retention.

Top Performers

Among the 1,750 companies assessed, 350 received Platinum overall recognition for strong performance across their workforces.

“As AI reshapes the labor market, the companies best positioned to thrive will be those that have built strong, sustainable talent pipelines, enabling them to meet the disruptions and opportunities that will emerge,” said Rajiv Chandrasekaran, managing director at the Schultz Family Foundation. “With its emphasis on assessing worker mobility at the occupation level, the Where You Work Matters List is essential intelligence in the era of AI.”

Twenty-two Platinum companies overall also received Platinum recognition across all three opportunity archetypes, signaling exceptional performance in creating high-quality jobs across a wide range of roles. These companies are:

Boeing • Docusign • Fidelity Investments • Fisher Investments • General Motors • HubSpot • Jamf • Liberty Mutual Insurance • Lockheed Martin • MathWorks • Mayo Clinic • Northrop Grumman • Northwell Health • Philadelphia Insurance Companies • Procter & Gamble • Progressive Insurance • Qualcomm • Qualtrics • Stryker • Texas Instruments • Tyler Technologies • West Monroe.

“Where you work has a significant impact on your ability to build skills, increase your earnings, and advance your career. What this List does is make that visible. It gives business leaders a clearer understanding of how well their companies are developing talent and creating opportunity within their workforce,” said Eva Sage-Gavin, a former Senior Managing Director for Talent & Organization at Accenture and HR executive at Gap Inc., The Walt Disney Company, PepsiCo, and Sun Microsystems.

The Where You Work Matters List is a non-profit, public-interest initiative and builds upon the earlier success of the partners’ American Opportunity Index. The List does not rely on corporate surveys, participation, influence, or disclosures.

The full list, along with additional insights into the findings and data sources, can be accessed at the List’s website.

About the Schultz Family Foundation

The Schultz Family Foundation's mission is to create greater opportunity, accessible to all. Our work is deeply rooted in the lives and values of our co-founders, Sheri and Howard Schultz, who believe talent is everywhere, but opportunity is not. We seek to apply the lessons they have learned over the decades to seed innovations and scale solutions to help young people successfully navigate the transition to adulthood and positively impact the trajectory of their lives. We are investors in unleashing potential and unlocking opportunity, working in partnership with employers, entrepreneurs, non-profits, and governments that share our aspiration of enabling everyone to access the full promise of America. Learn more at: www.schultzfamilyfoundation.org.

About the Burning Glass Institute

The Burning Glass Institute believes that everyone deserves meaningful work and the chance to move up. The Institute is a fully independent, nonprofit data laboratory that develops and analyzes novel datasets to construct models, metrics, and benchmarks that boost economic mobility, drive worker and community prosperity, and improve how talent and opportunity connect. Working at the intersection of the future of work and the future of learning, the Institute partners with companies, educational institutions, communities, government agencies, and philanthropies to support efforts that expand talent pipelines, advance worker mobility, and improve student outcomes. Founded in 2022 and building on a legacy of breakthrough innovation in labor market analytics, the Institute has emerged as a trusted voice bridging industry, educators, policymakers, and workers. Learn more at www.burningglassinstitute.org.

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PUB: 03/24/2026 06:00 AM/DISC: 03/24/2026 06:00 AM

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