Business

Panama Canal Expansion Facts

Published

9 years ago

November 25, 2014

Jeff Desjardins

Panama Canal Expansion Facts

The Panama Canal expansion began in 2007, and will be finally completed next year. The project, costing $5.25 billion, will have a large effect on international trade.

The most important result will be the amount of tonnage travelling through the canal. Yearly tonnage is expected to increase 218% from 275 million tons to 600 million tons.

An important boon of the expansion will be to LNG exporting countries, as most LNG carriers will be able to fit through the new canal. As an example, a Bloomberg report has the cost for an LNG ship from Sabine Pass, Louisiana to make it to Fukuoka, Japan pre-expansion at $11.4 million, taking 63.6 days. With the new Panamax expansion, it would cost $8 million and take only 43.4 days for a carrier to make the voyage.

Original graphic: Tuscor Lloyds

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Ranked: The Largest U.S. Corporations by Number of Employees

We visualized the top U.S. companies by employees, revealing the massive scale of retailers like Walmart, Target, and Home Depot.

Published

4 days ago

April 15, 2024

Marcus Lu

The Largest U.S. Corporations by Number of Employees

This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on Apple or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.

Revenue and profit are common measures for measuring the size of a business, but what about employee headcount?

To see how big companies have become from a human perspective, we’ve visualized the top U.S. companies by employees. These figures come from companiesmarketcap.com, and were accessed in March 2024. Note that this ranking includes publicly-traded companies only.

Data and Highlights

The data we used to create this list of largest U.S. corporations by number of employees can be found in the table below.

Company	Sector	Number of Employees
Walmart	Consumer Staples	2,100,000
Amazon	Consumer Discretionary	1,500,000
UPS	Industrials	500,000
Home Depot	Consumer Discretionary	470,000
Concentrix	Information Technology	440,000
Target	Consumer Staples	440,000
Kroger	Consumer Staples	430,000
UnitedHealth	Health Care	400,000
Berkshire Hathaway	Financials	383,000
Starbucks	Consumer Discretionary	381,000
Marriott International	Consumer Discretionary	377,000
Cognizant	Information Technology	346,600

Retail and Logistics Top the List

Companies like Walmart, Target, and Kroger have a massive headcount due to having many locations spread across the country, which require everything from cashiers to IT professionals.

Moving goods around the world is also highly labor intensive, explaining why UPS has half a million employees globally.

Below the Radar?

Two companies that rank among the largest U.S. corporations by employees which may be less familiar to the public include Concentrix and Cognizant. Both of these companies are B2B brands, meaning they primarily work with other companies rather than consumers. This contrasts with brands like Amazon or Home Depot, which are much more visible among average consumers.

A Note on Berkshire Hathaway

Warren Buffett’s company doesn’t directly employ 383,000 people. This headcount actually includes the employees of the firm’s many subsidiaries, such as GEICO (insurance), Dairy Queen (retail), and Duracell (batteries).

If you’re curious to see how Buffett’s empire has grown over the years, check out this animated graphic that visualizes the growth of Berkshire Hathaway’s portfolio from 1994 to 2022.