Where You Work Matters, a partnership of the Schultz Family Foundation and the Burning Glass Institute, today revealed the 20 large U.S. employers where young adults have the best chance to land first jobs with strong growth potential, providing vital new insight to recent high-school and college graduates seeking employment.
Unlike other graduation season good-jobs lists, the Top Places for Young Adults to Work integrates both the quality of common first jobs at major employers and how significantly those companies have been hiring at the entry level for those roles over the past six months. The list is based on Where You Work Matters’ empirical analysis of nearly 55,000 occupations across 1,750 U.S. employers, focusing on roles that best enable young workers to start and grow their careers.
The Top Places for Young Adults to Work comprises two 10-best lists: one for recent college graduates and one for recent high-school graduates. The college list includes household names such as Deloitte, Capital One and Tesla, while the high-school list includes Chick-fil-A, UPS, and Marriott International.
“Until now, most young adults have lacked trusted information to target their job search to employers that have been hiring and provide strong opportunities for a meaningful career,” said Rajiv Chandrasekaran, managing director of the Schultz Family Foundation, “Where You Work Matters intends to close that gap for young adults entering the workforce.”
The Top Places to Work for recent college graduates:
- Accenture
- CAI
- Capital One
- Cardinal Health
- Cognizant Technology Solutions
- Deloitte
- Lockheed Martin
- Northrop Grumman
- PwC
- Tesla
The Top Places to Work for recent high-school graduates:
- Best Buy
- Chick-fil-A
- Compass Group
- Enterprise Rent-A-Car
- H-E-B
- Marriott International
- Panera Bread
- SpartanNash
- TJX
- UPS
The ratings arrive at a moment of widespread anxiety about entry-level opportunity. The underlying data, however, tells a more encouraging story: About a quarter of all assessed companies, 442 in total, have been hiring entry-level workers at an above-average rate for five or more occupations rated either Platinum or Gold by Where You Work Matters for early career advancement.
While large employers have been hiring across hundreds of jobs, there is outsized demand for some occupations. Those with the most companies hiring entry-level talent at a high volume are:
- Registered Nurses (172 companies)
- Retail Sales and Service Clerks (156 companies)
- Customer Service Representatives (144 companies)
- Healthcare Administrative Support (125 companies)
- Software Engineers (124 companies)
“Recent graduates are entering a tough labor market, but millions of young people are still landing jobs, and hundreds of major employers are still hiring early-career talent at meaningful scale. Our goal is to help graduates see where those opportunities are — and which of them can become real launchpads,” said Matt Sigelman, President of the Burning Glass Institute. “Where You Work Matters gives those who are just starting out a more practical map: not only who is hiring in their field, but also which employers have a track record of helping people move up over time.”
To help jobseekers identify those opportunities, Where You Work Matters has launched a new Occupation Search feature on its website that enables jobseekers to easily search by hundreds of occupations to find top-rated employers that have been recently hiring for those roles. The Occupation Search feature points the way to more than 7,000 high-rated early career roles where firms have been hiring entry-level talent at average or above rates over the past six months.
In today’s dynamic and changing workforce environment, the Where You Work Matters List and corresponding insights are part of a broader set of career-navigation efforts by the Schultz Family Foundation and its partners to help guide young adults to the trusted information and resources necessary to find meaningful employment, job advancement and long-term career outcomes.
Additional insights into the findings and data sources can be accessed at the Where You Work Matters website.
About Where You Work Matters
The Where You Work Matters List, originally launched in March 2026, assesses nearly 55,000 occupations across 1,750 major U.S. companies and indicates which among them are rated best for three key attributes: early career, growth and stability. The List is based on an empirical analysis of the real-world outcomes of more than 12 million American workers assembled by the Burning Glass Institute and the Schultz Family Foundation in partnership with the Harvard Business School Project on Managing the Future of Work. The List is a non-profit, public-interest initiative that does not rely on corporate surveys, participation, influence, or disclosures.
About the Schultz Family Foundation
The Schultz Family Foundation’s mission is to create greater opportunity, accessible to all. Our work is deeply rooted in the lives and values of our co-founders, Sheri and Howard Schultz, who believe talent is everywhere, but opportunity is not. We seek to apply the lessons they have learned over the decades to seed innovations and scale solutions to help young people successfully navigate the transition to adulthood and positively impact the trajectory of their lives. We are investors in unleashing potential and unlocking opportunity, working in partnership with employers, entrepreneurs, non-profits, and governments that share our aspiration of enabling everyone to access the full promise of America. Learn more at: www.schultzfamilyfoundation.org.
About the Burning Glass Institute
The Burning Glass Institute believes that everyone deserves meaningful work and the chance to move up. The Institute is a fully independent, nonprofit data laboratory that develops and analyzes novel datasets to construct models, metrics, and benchmarks that boost economic mobility, drive worker and community prosperity, and improve how talent and opportunity connect. Working at the intersection of the future of work and the future of learning, the Institute partners with companies, educational institutions, communities, government agencies, and philanthropies to support efforts that expand talent pipelines, advance worker mobility, and improve student outcomes. Founded in 2022 and building on a legacy of breakthrough innovation in labor market analytics, the Institute has emerged as a trusted voice bridging industry, educators, policymakers, and workers. Learn more at www.burningglassinstitute.org.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260629598499/en/
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