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 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

corporations A corporation is an organization—usually a group of people or a company—authorized by the state to act as a single entity (a legal entity recognized by private and public law "born out of statute"; a legal person in legal context) and ...

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

, Esmark,

Chrysler Stellantis North America (officially FCA US and formerly Chrysler ()) is one of the " Big Three" automobile manufacturers in the United States, headquartered in Auburn Hills, Michigan. It is the American subsidiary of the multinational automot ...

Armour Armour (British English British English (BrE, en-GB, or BE) is, according to Lexico, Oxford Dictionaries, "English language, English as used in Great Britain, as distinct from that used elsewhere". More narrowly, it can refer specificall ...

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 Mobil is a petroleum brand owned and operated by American oil and gas corporation ExxonMobil. The brand was formerly owned and operated by an oil and gas corporation of the same name, which itself merged with Exxon to form ExxonMobil in 1999. ...

, 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 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