Prairie State Wire

A new survey of Illinois employees who work for large employers ranks Northwestern Medicine, Trader Joe’s and Microsoft the best companies to work for in Illinois, the Forbes website reports.

The second annual Forbes list of top employers, which is based on a survey of 80,000 workers nationwide, consists of 51 separate rankings, one for each of the 50 states and Washington, D.C. Only employers with at least 500 workers on their payrolls were included in the survey.

Northwestern Medicine is headquartered in Chicago and has 33,700 employees, while California-based Trader Joe’s has a nationwide total of 10,001 employees. And Washington-based Microsoft has a total workforce of 92,335

The surveys were carried out between October of last year and May of 2020, so employee opinions were collected before and after the coronavirus pandemic spread to the United States, according to Forbes. Forbes worked with the market research firm Statista to process the employee data.

Companies that showed up on multiple state lists of best employers tended to have the most widespread operations. These companies included FedEx, which finished 43rd on the Illinois list, the survey found. And public agencies, such as the Department of Defense (No. 20 in Illinois), tended to dominate the state lists, the publication reported.

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The Forbes Top-50 List of the Best Employers in Illinois

Rank	Company / Public Agency	Employees	Headquarters	CEO	Year Founded
1	Northwestern Medicine	33,700	Chicago	Dean M. Harrison	1859
2	Trader Joe's	10,001	Monrovia, Calif.	Dan Bane	1967
3	Microsoft	92,335	Redmond, Wash.	Satya Nadella	1975
4	Township High School District 211	2,019	Palatine, Ill.	Dr. Lisa Small	1875
5	Discover Financial Services	17,200	Riverwoods, Ill.	Roger C. Hochschild	1985
6	Costco Wholesale	163,000	Issaquah, Wash.	Walter Craig Jelinek	1983
7	Southern Illinois University Edwardsville	2,473	Edwardsville, Ill.	J. Kevin Dorsey	1957
8	Exelon	33,400	Chicago	Chris Crane	2000
9	Google	98,771	Mountain View, Calif.	Sundar Pichai	1998
10	U.S. Cellular	5,900	Chicago	Kenneth Meyers	1983
11	Apple	90,000	Cupertino, Calif.	Tim Cook	1976
12	Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago	1,667	Chicago	Patrick M. Magoon	1882
13	Department of Veterans Affairs	383,040	Washington, D.C.	Robert Wilkie	1930
14	Boeing	153,027	Chicago	David L. Calhoun	1916
15	Meijer	77,000	Grand Rapids, Mich.	Rick Keyes	1934
16	Ulta Beauty	45,000	Bolingbrook, Ill.	Mary N. Dillon	1990
17	Abbott Laboratories	27,127	Abbott Park, Ill.	Robert B. Ford	1888
18	Hilton	55,500	McLean, Va.	Christopher J. Nassetta	1919
19	North American Lighting		Paris, Ill.	Kirk Gadberry	1983
20	United States Department of Defense	2,870,000	Arlington County, Va.	Patrick Shanahan	1947
21	Diageo	30,051	Norwalk, Conn.	Ivan M. Menezes	1997
22	Snap-on	12,600	Kenosha, Wis.	Nicholas T. Pinchuk	1920
23	Indian Prairie School District 204	3,100	Aurora, Ill.	Michael Raczak	1972
24	Rush University Medical Center	9,311	Chicago	Dr. Omar Lateef	1837
25	Starbucks	218,000	Seattle, Wash.	Kevin Johnson	1971
26	CIBC Bank USA	1,000	Chicago	Michael G. Capatides	1991
27	Northwestern University	5,700	Evanston, Ill.	Morton O. Schapiro	1851
28	Mars	125,000	McLean, Va.	Grant F. Reid	1911
29	ALDI	25,000	Batavia, Ill.	Jason Hart	1976
30	Fellowes Brands		Itasca, Ill.	John Fellowes	1917
31	Packaging Corp of America	14,600	Lake Forest, Ill.	Mark W. Kowlzan	1959
32	Ford Motor	77,000	Dearborn, Mich.	James P. Hackett	1903
33	Wintrust		Rosemont, Ill.	Edward Wehmer	1991
34	Southern Illinois Healthcare		Carbondale, Ill.	Rex Budde	1875
35	Accenture	459,000	Chicago	Julie Spellman Sweet	1989
36	Marriott International	133,227	Bethesda, Md.	Arne M. Sorenson, Fumio Takashima	1927
37	JLL	27,000	Chicago	Christian Ulbrich	1999
38	State Farm	58,000	Bloomington, Ill.	Michael L. Tipsord	1922
39	Nordstrom	74,000	Seattle, Wash.	Erik B. Nordstrom	1901
40	Best Buy	125,000	Richfield, Minn.	Corie Sue Barry	1966
41	Continental	243,226	Fort Mill, S.C.	Elmar Degenhart	1871
42	IBM	100,000	Armonk, N.Y.	Arvind Krishna	1911
43	FedEx	112,330	Memphis, Tenn.	Frederick Wallace Smith	1973
44	AutoZone	81,000	Memphis, Tenn.	William C. Rhodes, III	1979
45	CDW	7,200	Vernon Hills, Ill.	Christine A. Leahy	1984
46	COUNTRY Financial	5,000	Bloomington, Ill.	Kurt F. Bock	1925
47	Allstate	45,700	Northbrook, Ill.	Thomas Joseph Wilson, II	1931
48	Deloitte	312,000	New York City	Punit Renjen	1845
49	Loyola University Chicago	4,000	Chicago	Jo Ann Rooney	1870
50	Argonne National Laboratory	3,349	Lemont, Ill.	Paul K. Kearns	1946

Source: Forbes.com