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What industry has the highest revenue per employee?

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Re: What industry has the highest revenue per employee?

#91

Post by nashashmi »

This confirms my suspicion of world power being concentrated in the hands of a few mighty industries.

When software engineering took off, the first industry that software engineering helped was software engineering. Then once that was nearly complete, the second industry they helped was the financial industry. And now the next industry being revamped/upgraded/futurized is the healthcare industry.

Surprised to see energy in there but as another commenter pointed out, it is because subcontractors are not included.

So Financials is the most powerful industry, second is healthcare, and then IT. After IT, my prediction is manufacturing/factories, media, building construction, and then engineering... in that order.

Not sure where to place energy, but I always saw them as too backwards for shift. Not sure where to place auto industry either.

Re: What industry has the highest revenue per employee?

#92

Post by coldtea »

pkaye wrote: post #53
coldtea wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Google disappeared tomorrow nothing would be tragically different after a year or so of adjustment. Without the energy companies we'd be in Mad Max mode for decades...

You are comparing one company Google against all the energy companies. You should say it differently. What if Google disappeared vs Exxon disappeared.

>You are comparing one company Google against all the energy companies.

Doesn't matter for my point, Google is the majority of web search in the west. Even if we add Bing and that Chinese engine, the argument is the same.

Can read it as "if we lost web search".

Re: What industry has the highest revenue per employee?

#93

Post by coldtea »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #57
coldtea wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Google disappeared tomorrow nothing would be tragically different after a year or so of adjustment. Without the energy companies we'd be in Mad Max mode for decades...

> If Google disappeared tomorrow nothing would be tragically different after a year or so of adjustment. I wouldn't be so sure. Google Search and Google Maps disappearing would be mildly annoying, but people would adjust. But if GMail and Google Docs (both personal and business GSuite versions) were to suddenly shut off, I dread the impact it would have on the economy. It would seriously disrupt many, if not most, sm…

>But if GMail and Google Docs (both personal and business GSuite versions) were to suddenly shut off, I dread the impact it would have on the economy.

I was talking mostly about Google Search.

These too I'd mark as even more insignificant as such.

There would be some impact on the economy, but more like those frequently recurrent "X billions lost due to Y2K preparations" or "Y billions lost due to malware" etc -- nothing much that people would really care about.

In any case, nothing like not having the source of the majority of energy and transport fuel.

Re: What industry has the highest revenue per employee?

#94

Post by coldtea »

simula67 wrote: post #59
TeMPOraL wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If Google disappeared tomorrow nothing would be tragically different after a year or so of adjustment. I wouldn't be so sure. Google Search and Google Maps disappearing would be mildly annoying, but people would adjust. But if GMail and Google Docs (both personal and business GSuite versions) were to suddenly shut off, I dread the impact it would have on the economy. It would seriously disrupt many, if not most, sm…

Google search ( and all web search engines ) disappearing would probably cause serious productivity decline in many fields like law enforcement, research and development, supply chain management etc Being able to acquire, understand and act on the right information at the right time is probably extremely important to our civilization

>Being able to acquire, understand and act on the right information at the right time is probably extremely important to our civilization

It's important but not that much. We did just fine without it in the 90s, 80s, and 70s and earlier.

So at best we'd be back to the 80s level of efficiency.

Without energy and fossil fuels (and with no time to adjust to alternative sources, e.g. in a sudden disappearance) we'd get to pre-1920 age levels.

Cars wouldn't move, factories wouldn't work, no cargo transport, etc.

Losing "the right information at the right time" of the kind Google provides would be a walk in the park compared to that.

It's just that people tend to take for granted what earlier and not so glamorous foundations offer.

Re: What industry has the highest revenue per employee?

#95

Post by cm2187 »

mattzito wrote: post #6

One item that I find potentially misleading is that, to my understanding, oil and gas companies outsource/subcontract a lot of the seasonal/irregular/less predictable work to third-parties. This means that these people aren't calculated in these numbers, but they generate a good chunk of the revenue. I could be wrong about that, but I used to work with Exxon and they talked about this - that the total employee base w…

Also revenues in a low margin business aren't really comparable to revenues in a high margin business. Profits per employees I think would be more interesting.

Re: What industry has the highest revenue per employee?

#96

Post by adamson »

windows_tips wrote: post #85
eeZah7Ux wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This, and more importantly, mattzito comment on external contractors and outsourcing. Energy companies do that a lot.

Wouldn't profit per employee per hour make more sense?

Why would that make more sense than profit per employee or (sub)contractor per hour if we’re trying to measure efficient use of human capital?

Re: What industry has the highest revenue per employee?

#97

Post by _bxg1 »

jofer wrote: post #21
mattzito wrote: post #6

One item that I find potentially misleading is that, to my understanding, oil and gas companies outsource/subcontract a lot of the seasonal/irregular/less predictable work to third-parties. This means that these people aren't calculated in these numbers, but they generate a good chunk of the revenue. I could be wrong about that, but I used to work with Exxon and they talked about this - that the total employee base w…

I think people often don't realize the scale at which energy companies use contractors/etc. The "boots on the ground" folks are almost entirely contractors or hired through another company. Plenty of companies exist purely to provide employees to one oil company in one field. Exxon/Chevron/Total/BP/etc each have around 50-100k employees (I may be a bit off there, but it's in the ballpark). The workforce required for…

As one data point, I had no idea

Re: What industry has the highest revenue per employee?

#98

Post by mattzito »

Oberbaumbrucke wrote: post #68
mattzito wrote: post #6

One item that I find potentially misleading is that, to my understanding, oil and gas companies outsource/subcontract a lot of the seasonal/irregular/less predictable work to third-parties. This means that these people aren't calculated in these numbers, but they generate a good chunk of the revenue. I could be wrong about that, but I used to work with Exxon and they talked about this - that the total employee base w…

But that's exactly the definition of an employee vs a contractor. Your last statement is a contradiction of terms.

Right, sorry if I wasn't clear - what I was saying was "there's a lot of oil and gas companies on this list. A lot of the revenue for these companies aren't actually generated by employees, but rather by contractors, and I wonder how much this is skewing the metric of 'revenue per employee'"

Re: What industry has the highest revenue per employee?

#99

Post by mattzito »

bradleyjg wrote: post #34
mattzito wrote: post #6

One item that I find potentially misleading is that, to my understanding, oil and gas companies outsource/subcontract a lot of the seasonal/irregular/less predictable work to third-parties. This means that these people aren't calculated in these numbers, but they generate a good chunk of the revenue. I could be wrong about that, but I used to work with Exxon and they talked about this - that the total employee base w…

I think if you follow this line of thinking you end up with a (economic) rent to labor ratio. Any kind of expensive piece of equipment could have been built by employees so by the same token that you count contractors you can include the labor component of those capital expenditures and so on and so forth.

I think there's a difference between capex and opex here - it clearly doesn't make sense for Exxon to build and design their own oil wells and pumps, as there's economies of scale and domain expertise for a dedicated vendor to provide those things as a capital expenditure. But if we're going to measure "revenue per employee", where the desired measure is "how efficient is each company at extracting value for every person engaged in value extraction", maybe there's a better measure like "human opex relative to revenue"?

Re: What industry has the highest revenue per employee?

#100

Post by throwawayjava »

coldtea wrote: post #94
simula67 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google search ( and all web search engines ) disappearing would probably cause serious productivity decline in many fields like law enforcement, research and development, supply chain management etc Being able to acquire, understand and act on the right information at the right time is probably extremely important to our civilization

> Being able to acquire, understand and act on the right information at the right time is probably extremely important to our civilization It's important but not that much. We did just fine without it in the 90s, 80s, and 70s and earlier. So at best we'd be back to the 80s level of efficiency. Without energy and fossil fuels (and with no time to adjust to alternative sources, e.g. in a sudden disappearance) we'd get…

Again, I think this comparison is a bit contrived -- an entire industry vs. one product at one company. Google's search engine disappearing is more analogous to a railroad or pipeline subsidiary of an oil company. Life would continue, the railway/pipeline would be rebuilt, and in 10 years everything would be back to normal.

If you want to make an accurate analogy, compare the disappearance of oil to the disappearance of all modern computing. Both would be catastrophic.

Society is complex and has lots of interdependencies.

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