2 ms·

Let's do Wallmart, latest 10-K, 12 months ending Jan. 31, 2019 [1]: Pretax earnings: $11,460,000k Employees: 2,200k (yes, 2.2 million people, worldwide)

• m0zg 7y ago
  You're picking examples of companies with deliberately razor thin profit margins.
  • H8crilA 7y ago
    I agree, but I'm also picking large employers (because that's how you'd get a lot of impact from a change like this). Which one then? :). Boeing? 10% margin (before the MAX - not in 2019, so not a Google or Facebook but still quite good). 12 months ending December 31, 2019: Number of employees: 161k Pretax earnings: $-2,259,000k (loss; that's the MAX fiasco) Let's take pretax earnings for 2018 instead: $11,604,000k Earnings per employee: $72,074 $72k bonus (but nothing more) is theoretically possible, for 161k people. In a good year, not in 2019 with the MAX troubles. Assuming shareholders are somehow OK with this. And assuming you need $0 for growing your business (like new factories, machines, acquisitions, hiring more people). And assuming you're leaving yourself with zero room for error (no cash cushion for a bad year), because sure as hell Wall Street will not give you investment-grade credit once you need it so that your bonds can go into old people's retirement accounts and slowly blow up there.