This may not even be knowable. I’m not interested in which company has had the most employees at any one time. I’m curious which company, over it’s life, has employed the most people. I know all sorts of things like mergers, etc can muddy the waters, but is there a list of this anywhere?
My WAG would be the East German government. The Stasi had a huge chunk of the population - about 300,000 or about 2% - on their payroll as informants.
If we’re not counting nation states, my next guess would be Wal-Mart.
…Whoops. Wal-Mart employs about 1.9 million people, making it much larger than the bureaucracy of East Germany.
I would suggest an employer that has had a high rate of turnover for a long time, somewhere like McDonald’s.
Most McDonald’s stores are franchises, though. Your average burger flipper does not work for McDonald’s Corporation.
True enough. How about a similar outfit that doesn’t franchise?
The United States Postal Service has 800,000 employees. That’s going to be hard to beat.
At its peak, Ma Bell had over a million people at any given time on her payroll. This is obviously before 1984, when the government broke up the Bell System into parts like AT&T, Bell Labs, Western Electric and the 22 local operating companies, affectionately called “Baby Bells.”
The Bell System was founded in 1890 or so, so “she” has had many, many employees over that near 100-year span.
Yeah, and they’ve been around a looong time.
What about the Catholic church? Do you consider all members of Catholic religious orders to be “employees” of the organization headquartered in Rome? According to these guys, there are 400,000 priests currently. Add in nuns, brothers, and lay employees, over the course of several centuries, and you’ve got a big number.
(Note that I’m not trying to snarkily equate the church with a “company”.)
That wasn’t a “company” in any normal sense of the term. If governments and noncommercial organisations count, I’d say the Chinese Army, with 7 million soldiers on their payroll.
I don’t think the OP is going to be answerable as you would have to know figures for staff turnover throughout the whole history of the organisation. The one I thought of immediately was the British National Health Service that employs 1.3 million people but I see that is a poor second to Wal-Mart :eek:
Incidently, I see the OP stipulates what “company” which excludes the Stasi as well as the NHS. It would also exclude the Soviet/Russian Army which must have had a awful lot of people through its hands 
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indian railways has 1.6 million employees.
probably chinese rail system has more …
In 1982 AT&T employed more people in New Jersey than the state government. So that’s my guess also.
One of the rental car companies had a special counter in Newark Airport just for AT&T employees, as an indicator of the size of the place.
Yes, I was going to say AT&T, Indian Railways, or Wal-Mart.
But weren’t almost all the people in the Soviet Union technically ‘employees’ of the government?
Well, over the course of its life, the Hudson’s Bay Company in Canada must have employed quite a few people. It’s been in existence since, I think, 1606. It’s always been a fairly large employer, with stores all over the country, and if you add in all of its various acquisitions over the years, and its offshoots, it probably adds up. As retailers go, its nowhere near Wal-Mart’s size, but WM’s been around since when – 1980?
- But Wal-Mart’s turn-over is probably a lot higher than AT&T or most other places.
how would we know
I seem to recall that at one time General Motors accounted for something like 25% of the United States GDP. I can’t find a cite to back that up, and am relatively certain that percentage is off by ±10%.
As a related question, how many piano tuners are there in New York City?
Because public companies generally report such things. Walmart claims an employee turnover of 50% . Seventy percent of employees leave within the first year . Can’t find AT&T specifically, but maybe someone with better Google skill scan help.
Only anecdotal experience here: but there is very little turnover. Every-damn-body here has between 30-40 years service. I’ve been here almost 10 years, and I’ve been here less than everyone in the entire building. They stay until they are forced to leave. Many employees seem to bounce around between the Baby Bells vs. going to another field.