The 50 best companies for people without a college degree
Last week, at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women summit, Lisa Gevelber, founder and head of Grow with Google, a program that helps people without degrees gain the skills to access higher-paying jobs, revealed some startling statistics: Of positions that pay more than $35,0000, 77% require a college degree, but only one-third of potential workers have one.
Now a new survey is showcasing publicly traded companies that offer the best career mobility for people without a degree. Among the top 50 is AT&T, where just 5% of the jobs require a college degree.
The American Opportunity Index ranks the 250 largest U.S. public companies, looking at career histories, job postings, and salary sources. Philadelphia think tank Burning Glass Institute led the five-year study.
AT&T won the index’s position as top company overall as well as making the top 50 in the career growth and career launchpad fields, but the rest are listed alphabetically rather than ranked.
The study looks not just at job openings for people without degrees, but also the chances of advancement. That’s critical as upward mobility has been decreasing across America for decades.
"Opportunity and upward mobility have long been central to the American experiment; however, this generational trend has been on a decades-long downward slide,” said Matt Sigelman, president of the Burning Glass Institute in a statement. “If you were born in the 1940s, you had a 90% chance of doing better than your parents. Today, it’s even odds.”
Here’s a look at the top 50 companies for people without a degree, listed alphabetically:
AT&T
Albertsons
American Express
Applied Materials
Arrow Electronics
AutoNation
AutoZone
Avnet
Broadcom
CDW
Capital One Financial
Charter Communications
Chevron
Cisco Systems
Citigroup
Cognizant Technology Solutions
Comcast
Costco
D.R. Horton
Dell
Delta Air Lines
Dollar General
Dollar Tree
Estée Lauder
Fiserv
Genuine Parts
Guardian Life Insurance
HP
Hewlett Packard Enterprises
Humana
Lam Research
Liberty Mutual Insurance
Mastercard
Microsoft
Murphy USA
New York Life Insurance
PG&E
Ross Stores
Southwest Airlines
Stryker
Synchrony Financial
Sysco
TIAA
Tesla
Travelers
U.S. Bancorp
U.S. Foods Holding
Wesco International
Walmart
Wells Fargo
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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