$642,000. That’s the average revenue generated per employee in the S&P 500.
Said differently, on average, it takes 1.55 employees for S&P 500 companies to generate a whopping $1 million dollars of revenue today.
That’s an eye-popping stat on its own, but even more so when compared to the number of employees it took 35 years ago.
In 1991, to generate that same $1 million of (inflation-adjusted, don’t come at me) revenue, it took 2.46 employees.
So yes, S&P 500 companies really are doing more with less.
Now let’s get to some charts.
The first chart breaks down revenue per employee by sector in 1991 vs today. The 1991 figures are inflation-adjusted to 2025 dollars to make it apples-to-apples.
*All sectors ex-energy shown.
Every sector has a higher revenue per employee in 2025 vs 1991.
But by how much? That’s what the next chart shows.
*All sectors ex-energy shown.
Efficiency gains across the board for every sector.
At first I thought this was a denominator trick, but it’s not.
S&P 500 headcount is up 71% since 1991, from 16.6M to 28.5M.
Do you think revenue per employee will increase or decrease over the next decade?
Cast your vote below - I’ll turn the results into a chart for my next post. Stay tuned!