The 50 best companies for people without a college degree

By Chris MorrisFormer Contributing Writer
Chris MorrisFormer Contributing Writer

    Chris Morris is a former contributing writer at Fortune, covering everything from general business news to the video game and theme park industries.

    Employee uses a tablet on a production line
    New survey showcases top companies for people without a degree.
    Getty Images

    Last week, at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women summit, Lisa Gevelber, founder and head of Grow with Google, a program that helps people without degrees gain the skills to access higher-paying jobs, revealed some startling statistics: Of positions that pay more than $35,0000, 77% require a college degree, but only one-third of potential workers have one.

    Now a new survey is showcasing publicly traded companies that offer the best career mobility for people without a degree. Among the top 50 is AT&T, where just 5% of the jobs require a college degree.

    The American Opportunity Index ranks the 250 largest U.S. public companies, looking at career histories, job postings, and salary sources. Philadelphia think tank Burning Glass Institute led the five-year study.

    AT&T won the index’s position as top company overall as well as making the top 50 in the career growth and career launchpad fields, but the rest are listed alphabetically rather than ranked.

    The study looks not just at job openings for people without degrees, but also the chances of advancement. That’s critical as upward mobility has been decreasing across America for decades.

    “Opportunity and upward mobility have long been central to the American experiment; however, this generational trend has been on a decades-long downward slide,” said Matt Sigelman, president of the Burning Glass Institute in a statement. “If you were born in the 1940s, you had a 90% chance of doing better than your parents. Today, it’s even odds.”

    Here’s a look at the top 50 companies for people without a degree, listed alphabetically:

    AT&T
    Albertsons
    American Express
    Applied Materials
    Arrow Electronics
    AutoNation
    AutoZone
    Avnet
    Broadcom
    CDW
    Capital One Financial
    Charter Communications
    Chevron
    Cisco Systems
    Citigroup
    Cognizant Technology Solutions
    Comcast
    Costco
    D.R. Horton
    Dell Technologies
    Delta Air Lines
    Dollar General
    Dollar Tree
    Estée Lauder
    Fiserv
    Genuine Parts
    Guardian Life Insurance
    HP
    Hewlett Packard Enterprises
    Humana
    Lam Research
    Liberty Mutual Insurance
    Mastercard
    Microsoft
    Murphy USA
    New York Life Insurance
    PG&E
    Ross Stores
    Southwest Airlines
    Stryker
    Synchrony Financial
    Sysco
    TIAA
    Tesla
    Travelers
    U.S. Bancorp
    U.S. Foods Holding
    Wesco International
    Walmart
    Wells Fargo

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