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How many people work in the insurance industry in the US ? How many people work for the top 1000 (or 500) companies, of any industry, in the US? How many people work for the top 250 law firms in the US?
Hello and thank you for your questions regarding employee count among the insurance industry, top companies, and law firms within the U.S. The two most useful resources I found were statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and a report on Fortune 500 companies. The short answer is that there are an estimated 1 million employees in the insurance sector, 27 million that comprise the Fortune 500 companies, and roughly 260,000 attorneys for the top 250 U.S. legal firms. Below we'll get a better understanding of these estimates.
METHODOLOGY
The idea of "top" as far as law firms was a bit finicky in trying to tackle. This could either include top grossing, or largest employee base. I tackled both avenues but found limitations to public data or sound methodology in providing this information. I did end up finding a sample report on firms with the largest headcount of attorneys. I decided to use this sample information to make an estimation. This is based on the assumption that larger firms would be more successful or be somewhere near what is considered top quality.
INSURANCE INDUSTRY
According to one source, as of 2015 an estimated 2.5 million employees worked in the insurance sector within the U.S.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are:
Insurance Appraisers, Auto Damage: 15,130
Insurance Underwriters: 91,650
Insurance Sales Agents: 385,700
Insurance Claims and Policy Processing Clerks: 274,350
This comes to a total of 1,041,250. The difference in numbers may be attributed to the number of HR personnel, secretaries, IT and other business personnel included in running a company who do not directly deal with insurance matters themselves.
This second estimation is echoed however in the report from IBIS which counts a total of 995,152 employees from across 424,425 businesses in the insurance sector.
FORTUNE 500 COMPANIES
I did not find a good triangulation or estimation for the Fortune 1000 company employee count. However I was able to find information for Fortune 500 company count. In 2015, the companies represented a combined number of 27 million employees and equates to roughly 17% of the overall workforce of the U.S.
TOP 250 LAW FIRMS IN THE US
Unfortunately a lot of the information surrounding law firms is undisclosed or not reported for free. I found a list of the top 250 largest firms as rated by the National Law Journal. A small sample can be viewed here. Click on "view sample" and an excel sheet will be automatically downloaded for viewing. A sample of 21 law firms, ranked #9-29 accounted for a total of 22,149 attorneys at an average of 1,055 attorneys per firm. Our best guess for the top 250 using this average would mean 263,750 attorneys total.
Other lists ranked by gross revenue, by practice type, or as rated be their peers.
CONCLUSION
To wrap up, there are an estimated 1 million employees in the insurance sector, 27 million that comprise of the Fortune 500 companies, and perhaps 260,000 attorneys for the top 250 U.S. legal firms.
Thank you for using Wonder! Please let us know if we may help with any other curiosities.