America’s Best Private Companies of 2026

Now, younger generations entering the workforce are less drawn to big companies than the generations prior. They factor in wellness outside of work in addition to salary. “They really care about their family, life issues; whether their work will be valuable to their own life. In that sense private companies might be a better place because they can design their own purpose,” Lee says. In this trend, they may also be interested in alternative organization structures like employee-owned companies or worker cooperatives, which have been growing in popularity, with the federal government even encouraging more employers to adopt such models. Southern staple Publix (no. 9) and warehouse chain WinCo (no. 10) are both employee-owned through an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP). 

“Usually, employee-owned companies have higher productivity, their revenue growth is usually 3-4% higher than other companies, and then their quit rate is about a third of other companies,” Lee says. “These numbers always show that employees are very actively engaged in their own company, because their perspective is more long term. … These are motivational incentives for employee owners to make their companies better, and perform better, and that could impact their retirement.” On the other hand, worker cooperatives benefit from “a lot of diverse opinions and comments and insight that really makes their corporate strategy different than other competitors,” Lee says.