Which is the world’s biggest employer?

One of my favourite little statistical gems has always been the claim that the NHS is the world’s third largest employer, after the Indian Railways and the Chinese army, so it is deeply disappointing to find that this is not true - it’s actually only the fifth on the list with 1.7 million staff.

Ahead of the NHS are McDonalds’ global workforce in 4th place (1.9 million), Walmart, including Asda in the UK in third (2.1 million), the Chinese army 2nd with 2.3 million and, at the top of the table, the US Department of Defense with a whopping 3.2million staff - although only 1.6 million of these are on active service,with the rest in civilian and other support roles.

This article in the BBC website’s magazine sets out the data and some of the difficulties in making comparisons. A couple of items which stand out here are the unsurprising fact that Chinese organisations take four of the top ten places, and that the Indian Railways are actually down the table at 8th, rather than 2nd. Tenth place goes to Foxconn, the Chinese manufacturer of Apple i-pads which became notorious in 2010 when news spread that 10 of its workers had committed suicide. However this data suggests that, given the size of their workforce, the average number of suicides amongst their staff is actually lower than the Chinese average.

But back to the awesome size of the NHS as an employer. Disappointing though it may be to find that I have to give up my claims of its coming third, I am guessing that,of those on this list, it has the largest proportion of the domestic workforce of all the organisations listed here.

According to current data the UK workforce numbers around 29 million, which means that the NHS’s 1.7 million staff takes up almost 6% of the entire UK workforce. Is that impressive, or frightening?