NEW YORK – Today, JUST Capital released the second edition of the JUST Jobs Scorecard, a data-driven interactive tool for companies to measure performance and gauge transparency on key job quality practices and worker policies.
The new tool, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, provides a unique view into how companies are approaching one of their most critical stakeholders – their workers – and helps demonstrate how investing in their people can benefit both companies and workers alike. Overall, the Scorecard suggests that actual performance, as well as disclosure and transparency, are all on the rise, and that there is much room for future improvement.
Top performing companies include JPMorgan Chase & Co, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Dayforce, Starbucks, Union Pacific, and American Electric Power Company. To use the interactive tool and dive into these leading companies’ scorecards, visit https://justcapital.com/the-just-jobs-scorecard/.
“The JUST Jobs Scorecard shows that companies are making steady progress on investing in the American worker,” said JUST Capital CEO Martin Whittaker. “We know from our polling that across demographics and political affiliations, this is what the public wants. And we look forward to continuing our work with companies to help them do this as effectively as possible.”
The Scorecard assesses 31 distinct data points across six job quality topics, scoring companies on a scale of 0-4, with 4 being the highest. The final score is determined against research-backed thresholds, which range from “no disclosure” to “leading practice” on the issues that JUST tracks. Topics include:
After assessing performance and disclosure across all data points, JUST calculates each company’s overall average score in order to categorize their overall performance. Overall performance categories provide a quick snapshot of how far along a given company is on the journey toward transparency on job quality metrics. The following table outlines how companies are increasingly disclosing information related to job quality, but also have room to improve across the board.
The JUST Jobs Scorecard follows the release of the JUST 100. It is important to note the key ways in which this resource differs from the annual JUST Rankings, both in approach and intended use case. Unlike our annual Rankings, which assess a company’s performance relative to other companies, the Scorecard provides an individual measure of a company’s current standing on job quality disclosure and performance relative to minimum, common, and leading practice standards.
JUST Capital’s 2024 Rankings spotlight the corporations who are performing best on the business issues most valued by the American people. These rankings are determined by scoring performance across the full range of criteria and comparing companies head to head. For the annual Rankings, JUST Capital collects and analyzes corporate data to objectively evaluate the 1,000 largest public U.S. companies across 20 Issues identified through comprehensive, ongoing public opinion research on Americans’ attitudes toward responsible corporate behavior. JUST Capital has engaged more than 170,000 participants, on a fully representative basis, since 2015.
JUST Capital is an independent nonprofit that demonstrates how just business – defined by the priorities of the public – is better business. JUST’s process is objective, data driven and non-political. Its rankings consistently demonstrate that the companies that score best on the Issues Americans care about most also outperform their peers financially.
For more information, please reach out to marketing@justcapital.com
By Aleksandra Radeva, Lisa Simon, and James Enright
Americans care that companies pay a fair, living wage. In fact, JUST Capital’s report “2023 Issues Survey – The People’s Priorities,” which measures the business issues most important to the public, found that paying a fair, living wage was the highest priority for a fourth consecutive year, garnering widespread support as the top issue across almost every demographic group. In a year marked by high inflation and increasing cost of living around the country, the focus on living wages – or a wage rate that allows workers to meet basic budgetary needs – comes as no surprise.
To gain deeper understanding of wages at Russell 1000 companies, JUST Capital continued its partnership with Revelio Labs, a workforce intelligence company that provides data and insights on employment at any company by using advanced techniques in machine learning.
This year’s results of the joint analysis show that among all U.S.-based Russell 1000 workers, 36.3% of workers are not making a family-sustaining living wage. That’s about 6.1 million full-time workers who are not making enough to support a family with another full-time working adult and two children. The analysis further estimates that about 19.2% of Russell 1000 workers do not earn enough to meet their own basic needs – or a living wage for one full-time employee without dependents.
These estimates are generated through the cutting-edge modeling techniques deployed by Revelio Labs. By absorbing and standardizing hundreds of millions of public employment records, Revelio Labs is able to infer employment compositions at any company, like how many people work at a company, the composition of workers in terms of roles and backgrounds or demographics, where a company’s workers live, and what those workers earn. In collaboration with JUST Capital, Revelio produces estimates for three data points used to measure performance on wages across America’s largest companies. To learn more about how these estimates are derived and how they feed into JUST Capital’s annual ranking of America’s Most JUST Companies, read our methodology summary or dig deeper into our full methodology.
Russell 1000 companies are the highest-performing public companies – and their workers, who make up around 10% of the U.S. workforce, earn more on average than other workers. In 2023, the median worker in the US earned $58,084 annually, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, while the median Russell 1000 worker earned 26.2% more – or $73,305. Russell 1000 workers also enjoyed higher wage gains in 2023, compared to average workers, which provided them with a slight advantage when weathering cost of living increases in 2023.
Industries naturally vary by their share of workers earning a living wage, depending on their composition of high-wage and lower-wage earners. Software and Biotech tend to have very high living wage scores, for example, as they typically employ many high wage earners and fewer workers in roles such as production or retail, which tend to be lower paid. Nevertheless, large variation in the share of workers earning a living wage exists within industries as well. This intra-industry range is evident in the chart below, which shows the difference between the average and highest shares of employees earning a living wage for a selection of industries. In the Industrial Goods industry, the difference is particularly striking – on average only 70% of workers in the industry are estimated to earn a living wage, but Rockwell Automation is estimated to pay almost 90% of its workers a living wage. Wayfair and Expedia also far outperform their industry average because their employee composition and core business differ from their industry peers, more closely resembling Tech companies than Retail and Restaurant and Leisure companies, respectively.
Last year, we compared all Russell 1000 worker salaries to one population-weighted national living wage threshold, no matter where a worker lives and works. This geographically generalized approach creates some unfair comparisons two ways: The relatively higher wage rates of workers in high-cost-of-living areas were being compared to a national cost-of-living threshold that was much too low compared to the cost those workers actually face. For example, the regional threshold for a two-adult, two-children household in the metropolitan area of New York City is $30.79 – 23% higher than the average national living wage threshold in 2023, $25.02. On the other hand, workers in low-cost areas of the country were being held to a much higher threshold than locally necessary. This year, Revelio Labs and JUST Capital decided to adopt a localized approach and compare worker salaries to the living wage threshold in their metropolitan area – a more ‘just’ comparison for everyone.
Interestingly, the difference in methodology makes little difference in the average share of workers earning a living wage. Under the national threshold, 65.4% of workers make a living wage, as opposed to 63.7% in the local threshold. The slightly lower share under the local threshold suggests that relatively more Russell 1000 workers live in high-cost areas. Comparing their wages to a local threshold makes it harder to meet the threshold.
This is not true across all industries. Some industries fare better using local thresholds, while most industries do slightly worse. The industries with higher shares of workers earning a living wage using geographically-specific thresholds are those with high concentrations of workers living in low-cost-of-living areas. Energy, Big Oil, and Chemical industries saw the greatest positive shift in the share of workers making a living wage. Media companies, on the other hand, have a higher share of workers in high-cost metropolitan areas, and their performance falters with the application of the correspondingly higher local living wage thresholds.
In the coming weeks, we’ll use further insights from these wage models to explore how America’s largest companies align with the increasing priority Americans place on creating equitable and just jobs.
We invite you to continue learning about the power of a living wage and its important role as a corporate threshold in this explainer co-authored by JUST Capital and MIT Living Wage Calculator. You can explore what prioritizing employees’ financial wellness looks like through the stories of companies participating in the Worker Financial Wellness Initiative, implemented in partnership with PayPal, Financial Health Network, and Good Jobs Institute. And if you’d like to participate in JUST Capital’s growing network of corporate leaders committed to advancing worker wellbeing, please reach out at impact@justcapital.com to request more information or a conversation.
If you would like to learn more about the methodology behind JUST Capital’s and Revelio Labs’ wage models or your company’s performance in them, please reach out to our corporate engagement team at corpengage@justcapital.com.
If you would like more information or access to company workforce data, including salaries, headcounts, or employee composition to benchmark your company to your peers, please reach out to info@reveliolabs.com.
Lisa Simon is the Chief Economist and James Enright is a Research Analyst at Revelio Labs.
For Justin Lagasse, CFO of leading sustainable energy company Avangrid, using a stakeholder model for decision making is just as much about driving business outcomes as it is about doing what’s right for customers, workers, the environment, and shareholders.
Despite pushback against Environmental Social and Governance frameworks, or ESG, Lagasse said that applying a broader stakeholder model, where decisions prioritize sustainable business practices, is not purely about compliance, but about driving long-term value.
“What’s really happened on the ESG front is it’s become about disclosures and compliance and I think because of that, it’s dissociated the value attribution that it provides,” Lagasse said at JUST Capital’s 2024 Annual Leadership Summit earlier this month. “We use ESG to drive business and financial outcomes.”
Avangrid ranked highly in JUST Capital’s 2024 Annual Rankings of America’s Most JUST Companies at No. 12 overall and No. 1 in its industry. It earned these designations through a variety of investments, including supporting the career development of its workforce and demonstrating a clear commitment to climate leadership, such as pursuing an aggressive 1.5-degree net zero climate target.
Speaking with JUST Capital President Alison Omens, Lagasse noted that in today’s economic climate, a company’s investment in its workers not only serves as a catalyst for individual prosperity and job satisfaction but also contributes significantly to a business’ resilience and sustainable growth.
On Wednesday, Avangrid announced it was joining The Worker Financial Wellness Initiative, a part of JUST Capital’s corporate leadership network implemented in partnership with PayPal, Financial Health Network, and Good Jobs Institute. Joining the initiative will help Avangrid continue supporting employees’ financial security and health.
Since Avangrid was formed in 2015 by joining multiple utility companies together, its leaders have placed a concerted emphasis on creating a unified corporate culture, where employee well-being is a core tenet. Leveraging data for a more personalized approach to employee benefits is central to their strategy, as they continue to work alongside a cohort of companies dedicated to improving the financial health of workers nationwide.
And while Avangrid continues to invest in improved employee financial well-being, it has already taken substantial steps to drive its employees’ overall well-being, implementing initiatives that focus on work-life balance, career development, and diversity, equity, and inclusion.
By joining the Worker Financial Wellness Initiative, Avangrid looks forward to building upon its investments in its workforce, which will underscore and build on solutions for customers and continue to create value for shareholders.
As Lagasse said at JUST’s Leadership Summit, he’s focused on investments that will build on the company’s success “not only tomorrow, but for the long term.”
March 6, 2024 — Avangrid, Inc. (NYSE: AGR), a leading sustainable energy company and member of the Iberdrola Group, is continuing to prioritize their employees’ financial security and health by joining The Worker Financial Wellness Initiative by JUST Capital and PayPal. The Initiative, established in collaboration with the Financial Health Network and Good Jobs Institute, offers resources to help companies assess and improve workers’ financial health.
“We want to be a company that attracts top talent to build long-term careers,” said Pedro Azagra, Avangrid CEO. “We do this by not only helping our employees grow professionally, but also supporting their well-being. The Worker Financial Wellness Initiative will cement us as a benefits leader and help us continue to enhance our programs and resources.”
The Worker Financial Wellness Initiative was launched in 2020 and engages directly with corporate leaders to promote the business value of financial health investment and empower them to perform worker financial health evaluations. Today, the initiative includes companies such as Chipotle, Chobani, Even, Prudential Financial, Synchrony, and Verizon, representing one million American workers. Since joining the initiative, participating companies have expanded and enhanced benefits, increased wages, created new ownership opportunities, and more.
Joining this initiative builds upon Avangrid’s commitment to caring for its people by providing diverse, equitable, and inclusive benefits that focus on their total health—physical, emotional, mental, and financial. This includes providing a leading 401(k) employer match, paid parental leave, comprehensive employee assistance program (EAP), and fertility and family forming benefits. Avangrid has also continued to expand its holistic benefits package by recently launching new programs such as a student loan debt repayment benefit, an emergency savings program, and mandatory financial training.
“Now is the right time to take our benefits to the next level by focusing on individual wellness,” said Kyra Patterson, chief human resources officer at Avangrid. “By leveraging data, we can take a more granular and personalized approach to the benefits we offer to take care of our employees. The Worker Financial Wellness Initiative will help us take this next step by leveraging research, tools, and a diverse network of subject matter experts dedicated to optimizing employee health and well-being outcomes.”
Tolu Lawrence, Chief Impact Officer at JUST Capital, an independent nonprofit dedicated to demonstrating how just business – defined by the priorities of the American public – is better business, noted that Avangrid’s participation in this insightful network of executives is monumental.
“Our polling of the nation’s public shows time and again that Americans of all backgrounds want CEOs to prioritize investing in workers,” said Lawrence. “And our research shows that companies that prioritize the well-being of their workers out-perform those that don’t. Avangrid is on a journey that will not only deeply impact the lives of its workers, but also has the potential to inform the trajectory of the energy industry at large. We look forward to welcoming them into the network and collaborating with our partners to drive impact with Avangrid and for its workers.”
Sarah Kalloch, executive director of The Good Jobs Institute echoed the sentiment, saying, “Research has shown how meaningful investment in employees can create productive, engaged, and motivated workforces that not only create better lives for workers, but also deliver real, sustained value for customers and shareholders. We are excited to support Avangrid on this journey.”
Media Contacts:
Sarah Warren, Avangrid
sarah.warren@avangrid.com
585-794-9253
Marguerite Ward, JUST Capital
mward@justcapital.com
In our 2024 Rankings of America’s Most JUST Companies, we remain committed to capturing companies’ commitment to all of their stakeholders. We also recognize the importance of addressing the whole of each stakeholder, which in a practical application can mean the entirety of a company’s workforce – including workers who aren’t legally or technically considered employees.
Prior to last year’s 2023 Rankings, we employed an “Under Review” designation for companies that meet two criteria: business models that center gig workers and self-identification as members of the Flex Association. This amounted to three companies in our Russell 1000 universe: Uber, Lyft, and Doordash.
Beginning with last year’s 2023 Rankings, we reached out to the same qualifying companies to more accurately capture the experience for gig workers and to ensure that these companies’ scores are more reflective of their entire workforce. In our outreach to Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash, we requested public company sources with information about the share of gig workers in their workforce population and the benefits/policies that are accessible to them. Using the information provided, we proportionately discounted the scores of these companies across our Workers stakeholder data points when there was no evidence that gig workers are covered by the benefits or workplace policies that are tracked in our model.
We recognize that our work in capturing the workplace experience of the many Americans who work in the gig economy, or more broadly as contractors, remains in progress, but we believe that continuing this approach is a step in the right direction. Our team will work to further refine our methodology to ensure that we best capture companies’ commitment to all their workers.
JUST Capital’s annual Rankings of America’s Most JUST Companies score corporate performance of the Russell 1000 against the priorities of the American public. Throughout the year, we monitor any unique events not captured by our current metrics that should theoretically have an effect on a company’s score and rank. Our analysts identify those events as instances resulting from a company’s actions or inactions that are: (1) considered material to just business behavior as defined by the public, (2) have the potential to affect a company’s standing outside the normal architecture of our ranking process, and (3) are sudden, extreme, or unusual in nature. This year, ten companies received a unique event treatment.
Our team screens possible events that fit the above criteria. The methodology involves a formal process of monitoring media coverage related to companies under consideration through platforms such as RepRisk, as well as consultation with the public, independent specialists, and other neutral third parties.
The details of each event, and how a company has or hasn’t responded to it, determine the type of treatment given to the company’s Ranking performance. These treatments, in order of increasing severity, are Serious (I), Severe (II), and Most Severe (III). Each step of the process, including the final results, are reviewed by independent specialists and other neutral third parties.
This year, the screening process identified 36 incidents, which were cross referenced along geographical and legal considerations among the full Russell 1000. Independent specialists evaluated the incidents to identify events that meet JUST Capital’s definition of a unique event. From there, 10 incidents and their related companies qualified for unique event treatments and assigned one of the three treatments listed above. Further details on the screening process and evaluation criteria can be found in our 2024 Rankings Methodology.
The ten cases JUST executed the unique events protocol in the 2024 Rankings are as follows:
Hawaiian Electric Industries Inc
Hawaiian Electric is a holding company with its principal subsidiaries engaged in electric utility and banking businesses operating mainly in the State of Hawaii. In 2023, the island of Maui experienced a deadly wildfire that resulted in destroyed towns, burned homes, and killed many residents. Three lawsuits allege that power lines owned by Hawaiian Electric, the main energy provider for the state, should have shut down to avoid this outcome. Due to the alleged negligence of the company with respect to this event and the company’s response and offerings of aid to the communities affected, they received a Severe (II) treatment resulting in the lowest score for the Community Development Issue.
Norfolk Southern
Through its freight railroad subsidiary, Norfolk Southern is engaged in rail transportation and transport of overseas freight in the United States. Norfolk Southern’s train equipment in Ohio experienced a major derailment that affected the local community’s health and safety due to the hazardous contents spilled in the derailment. Upon further investigation, it was found that a pattern of negligence and disregard of safety warnings led to the derailment, according to reports by theNational Transportation Safety Board. Norfolk Southern agreed to take responsibility for the cleanup, which affected the community’s soil, air, and water. This event resulted in the implementation of a Severe (II) treatment, yielding the lowest score in the Pollution Reduction Issue in the Environment Stakeholder.
Fox Corp
Fox Corporation is a media and entertainment company that produces and distributes news, sports, and entertainment content. At least one lawsuit alleged that coverage of the 2020 Election by Fox Corporation included misleading and false information. Some shareholders allege that by not monitoring the defamation risk of these broadcasts, it opened up the company to great risk with respect to its profits and stock prices. The alleged spread of misinformation and its negative impact on shareholders of the company has resulted in a Severe (II) treatment resulting in the lowest score for the Ethical Leadership Issue.
3M Co
3M is a global technology and materials company with products in industrial, health care, electronics, energy, and consumer industries. A subsidiary of 3M, Aearo, manufactured military earplugs that did not meet the standards for protection required by the government. 3M had tried placing Aearo into Chapter 11 bankruptcy, but a federal judge rejected that attempt in June, per reports.The company’s actions resulted in a Severe (II) treatment resulting in the lowest score for the Ethical Leadership Issue.
Tesla Inc
Tesla designs, develops, manufactures, and sells electric vehicles and energy storage systems along with installation, operation, and maintenance of solar and energy storage products. Tesla’s vehicle technology, specifically its driver-assistance system, has been involved in a number of crashes. This year it was found that the amount of crashes and fatalities related to the system is far higher than previously reported, which resulted in an investigation into possible fraudulent marketing, per reports Tesla recently recalled 2 million vehicles to address this technology specifically. Tesla will receive the Most Severe (III) treatment resulting in the lowest score in the Shareholders Stakeholder due to the role of company leadership in this issue.
Johnson & Johnson
Johnson & Johnson makes a range of health and well-being products in three business segments: Consumer, Pharmaceutical, and Medical Devices. Johnson & Johnson has been subject to lawsuits since their talc baby powder was linked to various forms of cancer. A subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, LTL Management, was formed for the express purpose of holding legal liabilities, filed for bankruptcy. A court dismissed this filing. Johnson & Johnson halted the global sale of talc powder in 2023. They received the Most Severe (III) treatment, resulting in the lowest score for the Shareholders Stakeholder.
Wells Fargo
Wells Fargo is a financial services company that provides retail, commercial, and corporate banking services through branches, the internet, and other channels to individuals, businesses, and institutions across the U.S. and in other countries. Wells Fargo was found to have opened up millions of accounts without the authorization of the customers. A Wells Fargo executive pleaded guilty in 2023 to obstructing the investigation of the remediation of this fraudulent activity. The Bank’s history of labor and banking violations extended into recent findings on employee usage of personal messaging for legal matters. The Most Severe (III) treatment will be reflected by giving Wells Fargo the lowest score in the Shareholders & Governance stakeholder.
The final three cases are carried over from the unique rankings treatment in our 2023 Rankings. Altria, Meta, PG&E all received a Most Severe (III) treatment last year in our Rankings.
Altria is a manufacturer and seller of cigarettes, machine-made large cigars and pipe tobacco, smokeless tobacco products, and wine in the U.S. We assigned a substantial penalty to companies in the Industry Classification Benchmark (ICB) Tobacco Subsector, following results from our 2016-2019 survey research. Our survey research has consistently revealed that most Americans believe that companies that make and market tobacco products are extremely harmful, less just, and should be in the bottom quartile of JUST Capital’s Rankings. Altria receives the lowest score in the Customers stakeholder.
Meta is a social media conglomerate with billions of active users worldwide and owns Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Oculus, among other products. The company has faced growing reports of its involvement in the spread of misinformation, hate speech, and other discriminatory and incendiary content on its platforms. This event is reflected in the Customers stakeholder. Meta receives the lowest score in the Customers stakeholder.
PG&E is the holding company for Pacific Gas and Electric Company, a public utility involved in the sale and delivery of electricity and natural gas in California. They became notorious nationwide in 2019 for the bankruptcy connected to its wildfire liabilities in California. In 2021, the state determined that PG&E’s alleged negligence sparked or contributed to regional wildfires that resulted in human deaths, widespread destruction of property, and endangerment of local communities. PG&E receives the lowest score in the Communities stakeholder.
Since our initial unique event treatment, there have been no substantial changes in business practices by any of the above companies that would result in the removal of this treatment. Barring any significant changes in business practices specifically related to these events, this treatment will remain in effect for a maximum of three years. If another event or development occurs after the three-year period, the event can be evaluated and, in appropriate cases, treatment can be reinstated.
