These 18 big companies made more than $250,000 in profit per employee last year

The world’s 500 biggest companies employ some 69.9 million people and together earned a total of $2.06 trillion last year. That translates to roughly $29,500 for each worker. But the 18 companies in the graphic above, concentrated in a handful of industries, proved vastly more efficient than average at making profits per employee. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the U.S. government-sponsored mortgage lenders, earned a combined $21.4 billion with a total of just 14,300 workers. Meanwhile, Saudi Aramco, the profit leader in the Global 500 with $88 billion, has 79,000 employees. Bigger isn’t always more profitable, though. Gold jewelry retailer Rajesh Exports of India produced $170 million in profits with the smallest workforce in the 500: a mere 409 employees.

A version of this article appears in the August/September 2020 issue of Fortune with the headline “Making the most of their workforce.”

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