The ''Fortune'' 500 is an annual list compiled and published by '' Fortune'' magazine that ranks 500 of the largest

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

corporations by total revenue for their respective fiscal years. The list includes publicly held companies, along with

privately held companies A privately held company (or simply a private company) is a company whose shares and related rights or obligations are not offered for public subscription or publicly negotiated in the respective listed markets, but rather the company's stock is ...

for which revenues are publicly available. The concept of the ''Fortune'' 500 was created by Edgar P. Smith, a ''Fortune'' editor, and the first list was published in 1955. The ''Fortune'' 500 is more commonly used than its subset ''Fortune'' 100 or superset ''Fortune'' 1000.

History

The ''Fortune'' 500, created by Edgar P. Smith, was first published in 1955. The original top ten companies were General Motors,

Jersey Standard ExxonMobil Corporation (commonly shortened to Exxon) is an American multinational oil and gas corporation headquartered in Irving, Texas. It is the largest direct descendant of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil, and was formed on November 3 ...

, U.S. Steel,

General Electric General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in New York state and headquartered in Boston. The company operated in sectors including healthcare, aviation, power, renewable en ...

Esmark Esmark is a surname. Notable people with the surname include: * Birgitte Esmark (1841–1897), Norwegian malacologist *Jens Esmark (1763–1839), Danish-Norwegian mineralogist, study of glaciers * Lars Mathias Hille Esmark (1908–1998), Norwegian ...

, Chrysler, Armour,

Gulf Oil Gulf Oil was a major global oil company in operation from 1901 to 1985. The eighth-largest American manufacturing company in 1941 and the ninth-largest in 1979, Gulf Oil was one of the so-called Seven Sisters oil companies. Prior to its merger ...

, Mobil, and DuPont.

Methodology

The original ''Fortune'' 500 was limited to companies whose revenues were derived from manufacturing, mining, and energy exploration. At the same time, ''Fortune'' published companion "''Fortune'' 50" lists of the 50 largest commercial banks (ranked by assets), utilities (ranked by assets), life insurance companies (ranked by assets), retailers (ranked by gross revenues) and transportation companies (ranked by revenues). ''Fortune'' magazine changed its methodology in 1994 to include service companies. With the change came 291 new entrants to the famous list including three in the Top 10. There is a lag in creating the list, so for example, the 2019 ''Fortune'' 500 is based on each company's financial years ending in late 2018 (most commonly, on December 31), or early 2019.

Influence

As of 2020, the ''Fortune'' 500 companies represent approximately two-thirds of the United States' Gross Domestic Product with approximately $14.2 trillion in revenue, $1.2 trillion in profits, and $20.4 trillion in total market value. These revenue figures also account for approximately 18% of the

gross world product The gross world product (GWP) is the combined gross national income of all the countries in the world. Because imports and exports balance exactly when considering the whole world, this also equals the total global gross domestic product (GDP).Se ...

. The companies collectively employ a total of 29.2 million people worldwide, or nearly 0.4% of the world's total population.

Overview

The following is the list of top 10 companies.

Breakdown by state

This is the list of the top 10 states with the most companies within the Fortune 500.

References

External links

Official website
* Full list of Fortune 500 companies
200620072008

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!--It seems the URL has a year root only for past editions. When editing for 2022, please change the URLs accordingly.--> {{authority control Lists of companies by revenue Fortune (magazine) Top lists Annual magazine issues