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Which is the largest employment generating company in the world?

I have heard it said (in business school circles) that the three largest employers in the world are the Chinese Army, Indian Railways and the NHS. All have over 1 million staff.

My quick research on this basis shows that this rumour is almost correct:

The Chinese Army (People's Liberation Army) - about 7 million strong (but not all soldiers - standing army is about 2.3 million (Wikipedia)

Indian Railways (1.6 million employees) and according to Wikipedia - the article references the Guinness book of records - as the "world's largest commercial or utility employer"

The UK's National Health Service (NHS) - 1.3 million staff.

Whether this constitutes employment generating in a truly commercial sense is another question and Wikipedia on the NHS notes:

As of March 2005, the NHS has 1.3 million workers, and is variously the third or fifth largest workforce in the world, after the Chinese Army and Indian Railways and (as argued by Jon Hibbs, the NHS's head of news, in a press release from Wal-Mart and the United States Department of Defense are also large:

Wal-Mart: 1.9 million (2007)

US DoD: (Wikipedia) 700,000 civilian
2,300,000 military (2004)

But a search on wikipedia on countries ranked by number of troops shows from Iran (although most are paramilitary) at 11 million down through 15 others with more than a million (but not all full-time soldiers)

So the definitive (well at least wiki Dec 2007 definitive answer is)

The largest 3 non-military employers in the world are:

Walmart - 1.9 million

Indian Railways - 1.6 million

UK NHS - 1.3 million

The final question is if this data can be compared on a per capita or other measure - the results of this have potentially devastating consequences politically:

Population of India over 1 billion i.e at most .16%

Walmart - globally spread employment (Walmart US/ Asda UK etc) - not valid comparison

Population of UK approx 60 million i.e NHS 2.1% of population and more like 4.3% of the Labour Force (31 million)

Hope this helps

RJG

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First answer by ID3565896088. Last edit by ID3565896088. Question popularity: 12 [recommend question].

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