While every company in the megacap space is a reasonably big employer -- and many of them are hiring -- the trend shows up in various comparisons. Right now, the five largest companies in the S&P 500 account for 5% of the index’s overall workforce. Twenty years ago, companies with the same market heft employed twice that. Electric-vehicle maker Tesla Inc.’s worker count is a pretty robust 48,000, but the company is now more valuable than Walmart Inc., which employs 45 times more people.
The Losers
On the flip side, the five companies with the worst metrics on Deluard’s scale are a mix of financial, retail and energy firms: American International Group Inc., Diamondback Energy Inc., Ford Motor Co., Gap Inc. and Citigroup Inc. Shares of retailer Gap have fallen 12% this year, the least of the five, whereas shares of Diamondback Energy are down 57%.
The way Shawn Cruz, senior market strategist at TD Ameritrade Inc., sees it, the coronavirus crisis has continued to exacerbate income disparities, and the stock market has mirrored that.
“Equity markets have moved higher and it has reflected the actual economy we have right now -- but it’s not necessarily the economy we would like to have,” Cruz said by phone. “The disparity is pretty much universally agreed upon. But I think the uncertainty is how bad it is and what shape the average household comes out of this in.”
This story was provided by Bloomberg News.