Private Equity Stakeholder Project releases update to Private Equity Employer Tracker

The Private Equity Stakeholder Project (PESP) has released updated research tracking the largest employers in the United States that are owned by private equity firms. This comprehensive research underscores the significant impact of private equity ownership on the American workforce and highlights the need for better labor standards across these firms.

PESP first released a database containing information on private equity-owned companies with 10,000 or more employees in 2023. The database now includes more than 250 private equity-owned companies with 7,000 or more employees. This database allows users to filter and sort data by various columns, including current owner, industry, and location.

According to the most recent estimates, private equity firms directly employ 12 million people in the United States alone, with millions more employed globally. The majority of these workers are concentrated in low-wage industries such as food service, retail, healthcare, and security.

While focusing on growing cash flows at the companies they buy, private equity firms often take a low road approach and seek to reduce wages, benefits, and staffing at companies they acquire – with devastating consequences to millions of workers, their families and entire communities. A PESP review found that private equity firms played a role in eleven of the 17 (65%) largest US corporate bankruptcies during the first six months of 2024 (bankruptcies with liabilities of $1 billion or greater at the time of filing), resulting in at least 19,700 layoffs across the country.

Private equity firms typically hold controlling stakes in their portfolio companies, giving them significant power to impact jobs and working conditions. A growing number of institutional investors have taken serious steps to increase firm accountability around labor standards. Two of the nation’s largest pension funds, California Public Employees’ Retirement System and New York State Common Retirement Fund, released labor standards that will be used to evaluate private equity managers before making a new fund commitment.

“While we applaud investor policy advancements, labor issues persist at private equity-owned companies. Our latest research highlights the critical need for private equity firms to adopt and enforce robust labor standards to protect workers and ensure sustainable employment practices,” said Justin Flores, Director of Labor and Jobs at the Private Equity Stakeholder Project.

The database includes case studies derived from the latest update of the largest employers data, and further illustrates the ways private equity ownership can degrade working conditions and harm workers.

One employer highlighted is Grimmway Farms, owned by Indiana-based private equity firm Teays River Investments. Since acquisition by Teays River, the company has been fined over $59,000 in Federal OSHA fines over seven violations, including at least three involving a worker death. Two of those seven violations have been contested and the cases remain open. Grimmway Farms recently came under scrutiny for its links to a pre-Thanksgiving outbreak of E. coli linked to carrots that left one person dead and dozens more sickened.