EMPowering Workers
Private equity-backed businesses are offering workers ownership in their companies, strong benefits, and the opportunity to build wealth for their families. Learn more here about how private equity benefits workers, drives innovation, and invests across America.
Stories of Employee Ownership and Success
Key Statistics: Impact of Private Equity on Employees
Giving Workers a Stake in Success
Many private equity firms have partnered with Ownership Works, a nonprofit initiative that builds employee wealth by expanding shared employee ownership of companies, enabling employees to directly benefit from the company’s success. Since its founding in 2021, Ownership Works has impacted nearly 112,000 employees nationwide, generating over $130 million in payouts to low-and moderate-income workers.
Private equity investments strengthen portfolio company employees’ skills development and career outlooks. Operational improvements create professional development opportunities for workers that enhance future job prospects.
Blackstone’s Career Pathways program works with portfolio companies to “increase access” and “enable advancement” for diverse and historically underrepresented potential hires. The program has led 50 of Blackstone’s portfolio companies to welcome 6,000 talent hires who might have otherwise been untapped. Blackstone portfolio companies have also hired over 100,000 veterans, veteran spouses, and caregivers since 2013 through the Veterans Hiring Initiative.
Workers employed by private equity-backed businesses can depend upon strong wages and safe work environments. Today, the average U.S. private equity sector worker, both full—and part-time, earns around $85,000 in wages and benefits—the equivalent of about $41 per hour for a full-time worker and higher than the national average.
On top of a positive company culture and employee compensation, private equity investments help facilitate safer workplaces for employees, which helps protect workers and improve operational efficiency across portfolio companies. In fact, researchers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, University of Georgia, and University of Texas at Austin found that public companies bought by private equity experienced “a large, sustained decline” in workplace injury rates—indicating that private equity helps “improve workplace safety.”
Private equity employs 13.3 million workers, generating over $1 trillion of U.S. GDP annually. The sector is critical in supporting American workers’ livelihoods and contributing to a strong U.S. economy.
A recent report by Ernst & Young LLP (EY) and the American Investment Council (AIC) shows that private equity-backed small businesses, their suppliers, and related consumer spending supported 4.4 million workers earning $360 billion in wages and benefits and $615 billion of GDP annually, driving economic growth and fostering entrepreneurship.
