First look: Best employers for workers with high school degrees
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Graphic: American Opportunity Index
Chipotle, Lowe’s and Walgreens are the best big companies for high school graduates to get hired and promoted quickly, according to a new analysis by the American Opportunity Index.
Why it matters: Some 40% of this year’s high school graduates do not plan to enroll in college this fall, per the index.
- Some want to bulk up their savings before going back to school, and others are weighing whether they want to pursue college at all.
- But while lists and rankings of top jobs for college graduates abound, there’s little data on the best moves for high school graduates, says Rajiv Chandrasekaran, a managing director at the Schultz Family Foundation, one of the groups behind the index. “Where they choose to get that first job matters.”
Zoom in: The top 50 best large firms for high school graduates are as much as 4.3 times likelier to hire people out of high school than America’s other big companies, the index found.
- Workers with high school degrees are also as much as 2.5 times more likely to get promoted — defined as a role change with a pay bump of 10% or more — at these companies.
Between the lines: Retailers are far likelier than other types of companies to have available roles for high school graduates. They comprise 20 of the top 50 companies. But banks and insurance companies are also well represented.
- PNC Bank, which reaches out to high schools to fill entry-level roles and offers skills and interview training, is no. 5. M&T Bank and State Farm are also on the list, among others.
Reality check: Though many retailers have taken steps to invest in entry-level workers, pay is low compared to other industries and quit rates are high as employees get fed up with dealing with theft and rude customers, Bloomberg reports.
How it works: Analysts did not go to companies for data, pulling instead from various labor-market data sources, like public LinkedIn profiles and Indeed resumes.
- They tracked nearly five million workers over five years and used that data to determine which companies are likeliest to hire and promote entry-level workers and which companies best prepare those workers for better jobs elsewhere.
- The index itself is a joint project of the Schultz Family Foundation, Harvard’s Managing the Future of Work Project and the Burning Glass Institute.
