Starbucks founder Howard Schultz: ‘You can do right by your people and your shareholders at the same time’

Fortune publishes lots of corporate lists–with companies ranked by size, rate of growth, social impact, reputation, employee satisfaction, innovation, and more. You can see them all here.  It is one way we make business better.

But this morning, I want to focus on a list that isn’t published by Fortune: the American Opportunity Index. It was the brainchild of the folks at the Schultz Family Foundation, working with The Burning Glass Institute and Harvard Business School, and it is notable for two important reasons:

• It’s a big data list, based on massive amounts of publicly available data, including various labor market sources, as well as LinkedIn, Glassdoor, and Lightcast job postings. That distinguishes it from efforts like Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For, which require companies to opt in to a detailed employee survey in order to be rated. More on the methodology here.

• It focuses on whether a company offers not just good jobs, but a route to a good career. It looks at whether companies will hire people with little experience and without degrees, whether they pay well and increase wages at a healthy pace, whether they offer ample opportunity for internal promotion, whether they retain employees and find leaders from within, whether they treat people equally without regard to race or gender, and whether employees who leave can find a higher-paying role at their next job.

Such big data efforts suffer from the common problem of dirty and inconsistent data–but this is still an admirable attempt to assess whether companies are adequately contributing to the urgent task of creating opportunity for people who’ve been left behind. In short, it’s about restoring the American Dream.  

Starbucks founder Howard Schultz told me he and his wife Sheri created the index “because we believe CEOs and corporate directors in every industry have tremendous power to create opportunity and upward mobility for millions of American families–and it doesn’t have to be zero sum. You can do right by your people and your shareholders at the same time.”

And now the drum roll, please. Top 10 on this year’s list:

1-Coca-Cola

2-J.M. Smucker

3-W.W. Grainger

4-PNC Financial

5-ServiceNow

6-Meta Platforms

7-Capital One

8-Bank of America

9-Costco 

10-Intuit

A few other interesting tidbits: Amazon (#27) outranked Walmart (#77), which surprised me. Among the big banks, Capital One (#7) and Bank of America (#8) outranked JPMorgan (#13); and Citigroup (#61). In big tech, after ServiceNow and Meta came Salesforce  (#23), then Amazon, Adobe (#31), Microsoft (#41) and Oracle (#63). In hospitality, Marriott (#48) and Hilton (#50) were neck and neck. But it’s worth noting that ALL the companies mentioned above were in the top quartile of the 396 Fortune 500 companies that were ranked (104 were excluded because of insufficient data.) Kudos to all.  

You can explore the list here. Other news below. And today’s must-read is the fabulous profile of investor Joshua Kushner, brother of Jared, who played a critical role in financing OpenAI, written by Fortune Editor-in-Chief Alyson Shontell.

Alan Murray
@alansmurray
alan.murray@fortune.com

TOP NEWS

'We are out of money'

The White House has issued a stark warning to congressional leaders that the U.S. is set to run out of funds to aid Ukraine by the end of the year, adding that inaction would effectively "kneecap" Kyiv. “There is no magical pot of funding available to meet this moment,” the White House budget director Shalanda Young wrote to party leaders in the House and Senate on Monday. "We are out of money–and nearly out of time." Financial Times

Spotify cuts jobs

Streaming giant, Spotify is axing around 17% of its workforce–or roughly 1,500 jobs–as the company seeks to become “relentlessly resourceful in the ways we operate, innovate, and tackle problems." Despite efforts to reduce costs, including two rounds of layoffs earlier this year, the Stockholm-based company is still spending too much money. What’s more, CEO Daniel Ek revealed in a company-wide memo that Spotify still has too many people “doing work around the work rather than contributing to opportunities with real impact.” Wall Street Journal

Bill Gates says Paris goals won't be achieved

Microsoft’s Bill Gates said the world probably won’t meet the Paris Agreement’s goal of keeping global warming below 2 degrees Celsius–but he’s still optimistic when it comes to preventing the worst effects of climate change. "Fortunately, if you stay below 3 degrees Celsius, a lot of the ill effects that people have heard about don't happen unless you really are irresponsible and let it get up to the higher range,” the billionaire philanthropist said. Bloomberg

AROUND THE WATERCOOLER

These nine successful CEOs were high school sports stars: Here are the lessons they’ve taken from the pitch to the boardroom by Orianna Rosa Royle

Broadcom CEO tells VMWare workers to ‘get butt back to office’ after completing a $69 billion merger of the two companies by Paolo Confino

Sam Altman sheds light on feud with Elon Musk: ‘The closer people are to being pointed in the same direction, the more contentious the disagreements are’ by Steve Mollman

Even the U.S. president’s return-to-office push is being ignored by workers: ‘They aren’t coming back’ by Steve Mollman

Lucid dream startup says engineers can write code in their sleep. Work may never be the same by Rachyl Jones

This astronaut was rejected by NASA three times. Here are his secrets to perseverance by Alexa Mikhail

This edition of CEO Daily was curated by Orianna Rosa Royle.