There are 6,411 U.S. companies with an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP), sponsoring 6,609 plans, according to the National Center for Employee Ownership’s analysis of the latest comprehensive Form 5500 data.
ESOPs are the largest government-tracked form of employee ownership. Including 820 known worker cooperatives and 32 substantially employee-owned Employee Ownership Trust (EOT) businesses brings the identifiable total to about 7,263 entities, although these models are measured differently and should not be treated as one official census.
This page compiles the latest available U.S. employee-owned company statistics, including company counts, participation, assets, ownership models, industries, and policy data.
Author
There are 6,411 U.S. companies with an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP), sponsoring 6,609 plans, according to the National Center for Employee Ownership’s analysis of the latest comprehensive Form 5500 data.
ESOPs are the largest government-tracked form of employee ownership. Including 820 known worker cooperatives and 32 substantially employee-owned Employee Ownership Trust (EOT) businesses brings the identifiable total to about 7,263 entities, although these models are measured differently and should not be treated as one official census.
This page compiles the latest available U.S. employee-owned company statistics, including company counts, participation, assets, ownership models, industries, and policy data.
Author
The most directly measured count is 6,411 companies sponsoring ESOPs. They sponsor 6,609 total plans because some companies maintain more than one plan. The count includes 5,993 private companies and 418 publicly traded companies.
The broader total cannot be stated as one official national count because worker cooperatives and EOTs do not share ESOPs’ annual federal filing system. The 2025 worker-cooperative census identified 820 worker cooperatives and democratic workplaces using fiscal-year 2024 data.
The Department of Labor (DOL) estimated 32 employer businesses substantially owned by EOTs, plus at least four businesses owned by related perpetual-purpose trusts. Separately, 5,208 profit-sharing or stock-bonus plans hold at least 20% employer stock; they are not classified as ESOPs.
Employee ownership measure | Latest count | What the count represents |
|---|---|---|
ESOP-sponsoring companies | 6,411 | Unique companies |
ESOP plans | 6,609 | Plans, not unique firms |
Worker cooperatives and democratic workplaces | 820 | Identified in the 2025 census |
Substantially EOT-owned businesses | 32 | DOL estimate |
Perpetual-purpose-trust businesses | At least 4 | Related trust structure |
Other equity-sharing DC plans | 5,208 | Profit-sharing or stock-bonus plans with at least 20% employer stock |
ESOPs had 15,105,304 participants in the latest data, including 10,999,997 active employees. The remainder are generally former employees who retain a plan balance before receiving final distribution. Active ESOP participants equal roughly 8% of the U.S. private-sector workforce.
Measures of broader employee ownership produce larger figures because they include other types of equity compensation. An estimated 11.8 million to 14 million workers participate in combinations of stock options, restricted stock, and ESPPs. A 2022 estimate placed the number of employees with some ownership stake at about 25 million, or 18% of employees; it is not equivalent to the ESOP count.
ESOP plan assets totaled $2.06 trillion. Public-company plans held $1.69 trillion, while private-company plans held $363.4 billion. Worker cooperatives in the 2025 census reported $806 million in combined revenue, a business-revenue measure rather than a retirement-plan asset measure.
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ESOPs expanded from a few hundred plans in 1975 to 6,609 plans in 2023. Total participation rose 8%, from 14.0 million in 2014 to 15.1 million in 2023, while average plan assets increased 57%, from $197 million to $314 million.
Worker cooperatives grew more quickly from a smaller base: identified firms increased from 323 in 2014 to 820 in 2024. The first U.S. EOT was formed in 2014; the DOL’s 2026 report identified 32 substantially EOT-owned businesses.
New ESOP formations averaged 269 per year from 2019 through 2023. The available counts describe new plans and should not be confused with net growth, because plan terminations and company changes also occur.
EOT formation accelerated from nine formations during 2014–2018 to 21 during 2019–2023, with at least 12 more identified in 2024–2025.
Leveraged stand-alone ESOPs were the fastest-growing ESOP category from 2014 to 2023: plan count increased 28%, participants rose nearly 40%, and assets grew 184%. Their share of plans rose from 41% to 53% during the decade. These plans are commonly used in ownership-transition transactions.
The number of ESOP-like profit-sharing and stock-bonus plans increased each year from 2015 through 2023, rising from 3,241 to 5,208. Among worker cooperatives, the share formed through conversion of an existing business rose from 21% in 2014 to nearly 30% in 2024.
ESOP plan counts fell from 6,669 in 2015 to 6,467 in 2020 before rising to 6,609 in 2023. Participant totals fell through 2019, then recovered sharply in 2021–2023. These filings are plan-year data and can change as late filings are processed.
Filing year | ESOPs | Total participants | Active participants |
|---|---|---|---|
2015 | 6,669 | 14,431,622 | 10,829,726 |
2016 | 6,625 | 14,206,950 | 10,611,905 |
2017 | 6,561 | 14,243,050 | 10,611,495 |
2018 | 6,502 | 14,050,574 | 10,376,360 |
2019 | 6,482 | 13,907,247 | 10,218,125 |
2020 | 6,467 | 13,947,665 | 10,171,561 |
2021 | 6,533 | 14,743,634 | 10,707,608 |
2022 | 6,548 | 14,956,315 | 10,864,075 |
2023 | 6,609 | 15,105,304 | 10,999,997 |
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ESOPs account for 6,411 companies and 6,609 plans. Of the plans, 6,098 are at private companies and 511 are at public companies. Among private plans, 3,623, or 59%, are leveraged; 2,390 are non-leveraged.
Plans with fewer than 100 participants make up roughly half of ESOPs, while larger plans hold most participants and assets. KSOPs, which combine an ESOP and 401(k) arrangement, make up 15% of plans but cover 87% of participants and hold 88% of assets.
The DOL estimated that 32 U.S. employer businesses are substantially owned by EOTs, along with at least four businesses owned by perpetual-purpose trusts. No single federal reporting system tracks EOTs, so the figure is an identified minimum rather than a complete census.
EOTs formed in the U.S. only from 2014 onward. The comparison often cited in the research is the United Kingdom, where more than 2,000 EOTs have been established; the difference reflects distinct legal and tax frameworks.
The 2025 State of the Sector census identified 820 worker cooperatives and democratic workplaces, employing an estimated 13,520 people and generating $806 million in combined revenue. The census received responses from 242 firms, and its authors caution that respondents are not fully representative of the entire field.
The median worker cooperative has fewer than 10 workers, although large home-health-care and rideshare cooperatives employ thousands. Food service, business support, agricultural production, cleaning, and engineering/manufacturing are among the sectors with concentrations of worker cooperatives.
Fifty-seven percent of U.S. public companies offer an ESPP, up from just under half in 2021. Reported average participation rates vary by survey and plan design, ranging from about 23.8% to 30.4%; plans with both a 15% discount and a lookback feature can reach 44% participation.
In the 2025 ESPP benchmarking research, 93% of surveyed plans offered a 15% purchase discount and 91% included a lookback feature. Plans with a 15% discount showed about twice the participation and 1.5 times the contribution rate of plans without that discount.
An estimated 11.8 million to 14 million U.S. employees participate in some combination of stock options, restricted stock, and ESPPs. In Carta’s 2025 private-markets data, 72% of venture-backed startups offered stock options to all full-time employees; the share rose to 89% at Series A and 97% at Series C or later.
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ESOP companies are concentrated in manufacturing, professional services, and construction. NCEO’s private-company breakdown places those three sectors at more than half of private ESOP companies combined. DOL’s broader industry methodology places about 29% of ESOPs in service sectors, 20% in manufacturing, 16% in construction, and 13% in finance, insurance, and real estate combined.
Manufacturing represents about 20%–21% of private ESOP companies, making it one of the largest employee-ownership sectors. It is also among the most common industries for publicly traded ESOP companies.
Construction accounts for about 16%–17% of ESOPs. It is also represented among the small but growing EOT population, including architecture and construction businesses with 200–500 employees.
Professional, scientific, and technical services represent about 19%–22% of private ESOP companies. Depending on the dataset and classification, this makes the sector either the largest or second-largest ESOP industry.
Wholesale and retail trade together account for approximately 18% of ESOP companies in the available industry breakdown. Retail and consumer goods are not separately isolated in the DOL’s aggregated service-sector measure.
Finance, insurance, and real estate collectively account for 13% of ESOPs in the DOL measure; an NCEO-aligned industry breakdown puts finance alone near 6%. EOTs have no strong industry concentration in the limited sample, but identified businesses include food and agriculture, manufacturing, software, and consulting.
Industry | Share of ESOPs or private ESOP companies |
|---|---|
Manufacturing | 20%–21% |
Professional, scientific, and technical services | 19%–22% |
Construction | 16%–17% |
Wholesale and retail | About 18% |
Finance, insurance, and real estate | 13% combined |
Sources:
The latest ESOP data report 10,999,997 active participants, the closest available count of employees currently working at ESOP sponsors. Total ESOP participation is 15,105,304 because it also includes about 4.1 million former employees who have not yet received their full distribution.
Known worker cooperatives employ an estimated 13,520 people. EOT coverage is harder to total because businesses are not centrally reported; the DOL notes that the largest identified EOT transaction involves a home-health-care company with tens of thousands of employees.
Private employers account for nearly all ESOP sponsors, but public employers account for most plan participants. Private plans cover 2.87 million total participants; public plans cover 12.24 million.
Active ESOP participants make up approximately 8% of the U.S. private-sector workforce. Broader measures differ: a 2022 estimate found that about 18% of employees held some employer ownership stake, while a separate broader-program estimate found fewer than 9% of private-sector workers currently participate in any employee ownership program. Definitions, survey design, and treatment of former participants explain why these figures are not interchangeable.
Company type | ESOP plans | Total participants | Active participants | Total assets |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Private | 6,098 | 2,866,357 | 2,139,661 | $363.4 billion |
Public | 511 | 12,238,947 | 8,860,336 | $1.69 trillion |
Total | 6,609 | 15,105,304 | 10,999,997 | $2.06 trillion |
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NCEO’s Employee Ownership 100 list includes companies that are at least 50% employee-owned through an ESOP, worker cooperative, or another broad-based plan. The 100 listed companies collectively employ more than 655,000 workers.
Among privately held ESOPs, NCEO and Rutgers estimates indicate that 80% of S-corporation ESOPs and 20% of C-corporation ESOPs are majority- or 100%-owned by the ESOP. Applying those shares to plan counts suggests more than 3,700 such private companies, but this is a derived estimate rather than a reported national count.
The Employee Ownership 100 uses an asterisk to mark companies that are 100% ESOP- or worker-owned; most companies on the current list carry that marker. Large examples include WinCo Foods (20,000 employees), Houchens Industries (15,000), Amsted Industries (14,600), HDR (14,209), and Davey Tree Expert (12,413).
S corporations account for 4,113 private ESOP plans, or 67%; C corporations account for 1,985, or 33%. S-corporation ESOPs had $209.6 billion in total plan assets, compared with $153.8 billion at C-corporation ESOPs.
Corporation type | Plans | Total participants | Active participants | Total plan assets |
|---|---|---|---|---|
S corporation | 4,113 | 1,197,361 | 851,750 | $209.6 billion |
C corporation | 1,985 | 1,668,995 | 1,287,911 | $153.8 billion |
Private companies make up 91% of ESOP sponsors by company count, while public companies hold about 81% of participants and 82% of plan assets. The disparity reflects the much larger average workforces at publicly traded ESOP sponsors.
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Publix Super Markets is the largest company on NCEO’s Employee Ownership 100, with 260,000 employees. Employees and former employees collectively own 80% of Publix, while the founder’s family retains 20%.
Rank | Company | Industry | Employees | 100% employee-owned |
|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Publix Super Markets | Supermarkets | 260,000 | No; 80% ESOP |
2 | WinCo Foods | Supermarkets | 20,000 | Yes |
3 | Houchens Industries | Diversified holding company | 15,000 | Yes |
4 | Amsted Industries | Industrial components | 14,600 | Yes |
5 | HDR | Architecture and engineering | 14,209 | Yes |
6 | Scheels All Sports | Retail sporting goods | 13,000 | Yes |
6 | Black and Veatch | Engineering and construction | 13,000 | Yes |
8 | Davey Tree Expert | Tree and environmental services | 12,413 | Yes |
9 | Burns and McDonnell | Architecture and engineering | 12,000 | Yes |
10 | Brookshire Grocery | Supermarkets | 10,374 | Yes |
Supermarkets dominate the top workforce rankings, led by Publix, WinCo Foods, and Brookshire Grocery. Architecture and engineering has several large firms, including HDR, Black and Veatch, Burns and McDonnell, HNTB, and Gensler. Major manufacturing examples include Amsted Industries, W. L. Gore and Associates, and Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories.
Publix was the third-largest privately held U.S. company in the cited research, behind Cargill and Koch Industries. It reported $46.8 billion in sales for the first nine months of 2025, up 5.8% from $44.2 billion in the same period of 2024. Houchens Industries generates more than $4 billion in annual revenue while being 100% employee-owned.
Publix, W. L. Gore, and Parsons have 1974 ESOP start dates in the NCEO database, among the earliest dates reported for major current employee-owned companies. The date coincides with the year ERISA formally enabled the modern ESOP framework.
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ESOPs held $2.06 trillion in total plan assets in the latest Form 5500-based data. Of that total, private-company ESOPs held $363.4 billion and public-company ESOPs held $1.69 trillion. Employer securities held by ESOPs were valued at an estimated $1.56 trillion.
Employer securities averaged an estimated $158,767 per employee-participant. That figure is an average across plans and should not be used as a typical individual account balance: value varies substantially by tenure, company performance, allocation rules, and the degree of employee ownership. Public-company ESOPs generally own only 1%–3% of shares outstanding, while some private-company ESOPs own a majority or all of the company.
About 73% of all ESOP participants are active employees, or roughly 11.0 million of 15.1 million participants. Academic research summarized by NCEO and Rutgers finds higher retirement account balances among ESOP employees than comparable non-ESOP employees, while also noting material variation among companies and plans.
ESOPs paid more than $166 billion in participant benefit distributions in 2023. Contributions totaled $114.9 billion in the same year, producing nearly $281 billion in combined annual inflows and outflows.
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Business succession is a central source of potential employee-ownership conversions as Baby Boomer owners retire. Research cited for California estimates that 358,900 firms, 3.87 million employees, and $865.6 billion in revenue could be affected by ownership transition. Florida faces 212,000 firms, 1.96 million employees, and $357.1 billion in revenue; Georgia has 73,800 firms and $193.9 billion in revenue at stake.
In the St. Louis region, an estimated 8,000 firms are potential ownership-transfer candidates in the next decade, representing nearly $40 billion in enterprise value. More than half of current owners are 55 or older, and one in four is 65 or older.
New ESOP formations reached 309 in 2023, the highest annual total in the 2019–2023 series. The faster growth of leveraged stand-alone ESOPs and the increasing share of co-op conversions both point to business succession as an important adoption channel.
ESPP adoption also rose from just under half of public companies in 2021 to 57% in the 2024 survey. These plans are not company-ownership conversions, but they indicate broader use of employee equity programs.
No government agency or NCEO forecast provides a definitive future company count. Recent ESOP formation of roughly 270–310 plans per year has been offset partly by approximately 200–300 dissolutions or terminations annually, leaving net growth flat to modestly positive over the past decade.
EOTs and worker cooperatives are growing from much smaller bases. Worker-cooperative counts more than doubled from 2014 to 2024. The growth of EOT formations is also rapid, but neither trend supports a reliable national market forecast because reporting is incomplete.
EOTs and perpetual-purpose trusts are emerging alternatives for owners seeking perpetual stewardship rather than a conventional ESOP structure. The DOL separately identified at least four perpetual-purpose-trust businesses alongside the 32 EOT-owned businesses.
Worker-cooperative conversions are another growing route: nearly 30% of co-ops formed in 2024 were converted existing businesses, compared with 21% in 2014. Proposed federal financing legislation could expand options beyond the SBA 7(a) program, but the proposals remain subject to congressional action.
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The United States has 6,411 employee-owned companies with ESOPs, making ESOPs the dominant and most consistently tracked form of employee ownership. When worker cooperatives and Employee Ownership Trusts are also considered, the identifiable total exceeds 7,200 organizations, although these ownership models are reported through different systems and should not be combined as one official national figure.
Employee ownership continues to play a significant role in the U.S. economy. More than 15 million people participate in ESOPs, plan assets have grown to $2.06 trillion, and new ownership transitions continue as business owners seek succession solutions. While ESOPs remain the largest model, worker cooperatives and EOTs are expanding steadily, broadening the ways employees can build ownership and long-term wealth.
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