Our recent ESOP Topics Survey gathered data from 160 ESOP companies on how they’re handling the COVID-19 crisis and other issues, including questions about their turnover rates in 2019. The surveyed ESOP companies reported dramatically lower turnover than overall national averages.  This difference persisted at the industry level in each of the industries with enough data to make comparisons: wholesale trade, manufacturing, and construction ESOP companies had turnover rates less than half of national averages for their industry. See tables below for details (national data is from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.)

The differences in turnover certainly should not be attributed solely to the existence of an ESOP at these companies. Nonetheless, the results are large enough to indicate marked and interesting differences.

<Members can view a summary of the results in member resources> Respondents received a full report as a thank you.

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Job Openings and Labor Turnover,” tables 16 and 20, accessed June 2020. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.toc.htm