Companies backed by private equity investments provide jobs for more than six million Americans, or more than five per cent of all private sector workers, according to analysis by the Private Equity Council.
The report, the first to quantify the scope and scale of private equity employment in the US, also found that private equity investment firms channelled more than USD1trn in new capital into nearly 9,500 US companies during the past ten years.
That amounts to investments of about USD120m per company.
More than 2,500 of the private equity-backed businesses in the US – or 30 per cent – are manufacturers. Together, they employ at least 1.3 million workers.
The six million jobs total is based on actual employment reports from 3,650 – or 39 per cent – of the 9,473 private equity-backed companies headquartered in the US. Using data sampling and analysis techniques similar to those employed by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics to estimate US employment and payroll, the Private Equity Council estimates that the actual number of employees at all US private equity-backed companies – including the companies that did not report employment data – is approximately 10.9 million.
All 50 states benefit from private equity investment. California, the nation’s most populous state, is home to 1,205 private equity backed companies that together employ more than 440,000 people in facilities in California and elsewhere across the country. Even Wyoming, with a population of 540,000, is the headquarters of ten small private equity-backed companies that together employ 180 people in all their facilities.
“This groundbreaking analysis shows that private equity firms – and the companies in which they invest – are critically important to the American economy,” says Private Equity Council president Douglas Lowenstein (pictured). “The USD1trn that private equity firms have invested in American companies in the past ten years has provided important and direct benefits for millions of Americans.”
