The National Center or Employee Ownership (NCEO) published an article on their Web site entitled “A Brief Overview Of Employee Ownership In The United States.”
“As of 2010, we at the National Center for Employee Ownership (NCEO) estimate that, among companies that have stock, about 36% of the work force own stock in their employers through one kind of plan or another. Those roughly 28 million employee owners represent an astonishing growth over the last 40 years, when probably not more than one million employees owned stock in their employers. This ownership comes in several forms, ranging from stock purchase plans in public companies, broadly granted stock options and similar kinds of equity awards, and employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs), a company sponsored ownership plan that holds stock in the employer for employees. The table below shows our current (2009) estimate of the extent of employee ownership in the U.S. (note that some employees may be in more than one plan, especially option and stock purchase plans).”
This is an excellent introduction to understanding the extent of employee ownership in the United States. The Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) was the first tool designed by binary economist Louis O. Kelso and used to broaden ownership of productive capital among the employees of a corporation.
