New data names the 20 best employers for launching a career
A new ranking names 20 large U.S. employers where recent graduates have the best odds of landing a first job with room to grow. The list of top places for young adults to work has one list for college graduates, featuring Accenture, Capital One, Deloitte, PwC and Tesla, and one for high school graduates, featuring Best Buy, Chick-fil-A, Marriott International, UPS and Enterprise Rent-A-Car.
The Where You Work Matters list rates nearly 55,000 occupations at 1,750 major U.S. companies on career growth and stability. It’s built on data from more than 12 million American workers, compiled by the Burning Glass Institute and the Schultz Family Foundation with Harvard Business School’s Project on Managing the Future of Work.
This ranking weighs the quality of common first jobs at each company and how heavily that employer has hired entry-level workers for those roles over the past six months. Research from SAP SuccessFactors found openings in the 10 most common entry-level job titles dropped 35% between 2024 and 2025, as budget pressure, hiring freezes and uncertainty about the return on early-career roles pushed many employers to pause.
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Top places for college grads
The SAP research also offers a way to understand why these employers may be earning recognition. Its authors argue that the early-talent programs worth keeping share a few traits, and the named companies appear to express them.
SAP found that the strongest programs give early-career workers meaningful assignments with clear goals and regular feedback. The list rates employers partly on growth potential, so companies whose first jobs lead to advancement seem to score well on that exact measure.
Here are those top orgs hiring college grads:
- Accenture
- CAI
- Capital One
- Cardinal Health
- Cognizant Technology Solutions
- Deloitte
- Lockheed Martin
- Northrop Grumman
- PwC
- Tesla
Read more: IBM rewrites entry-level jobs as AI hiring surges
Strong ‘launchpads’ for entry-level talent
“Recent graduates are entering a tough labor market, but millions of young people are still landing jobs, and hundreds of major employers are still hiring early-career talent at meaningful scale,” said Matt Sigelman, President of the Burning Glass Institute. “Our goal is to help graduates see where those opportunities are—and which of them can become real launchpads.”
The data on top organizations found registered nurses, customer service representatives and software engineers to be among the occupations with the most companies hiring at high volume. It also revealed that healthcare and customer-facing roles, many open to candidates without four-year degrees, are absorbing a large share of early-career hiring.
Additionally, the employers recognized as strong “launchpads” for junior workers are the ones that retained early-career hiring, while other employers largely cut it. “Widespread reductions in early talent hiring will lead to skills gaps that will prove expensive to remedy,” according to Autumn Krauss, an organizational psychologist and author of the SAP report. “Organizations will struggle to build company capabilities, retain knowledge and develop future leaders.”
