This marks Cognizant’s third consecutive year on the list

TEANECK, N.J., Oct. 28, 2024 - Cognizant has been named an employer of choice on the 2024 American Opportunity Index. The ranking identifies the top U.S. companies that excel in advancing employee careers and supporting the middle class in a dynamic labor market.

Cognizant ranked first out of the nine IT services companies on the list. Being included on the list for the third consecutive year recognizes the company’s commitment to becoming the employer of choice in its industry.

Now in its third year, The American Opportunity Index, a collaboration between The Burning Glass Institute, the Schultz Family Foundation, and Harvard Business School's Managing the Future of Work Project, stands out for its independent analysis of career trajectories for more than five million employees across 395 major companies. It evaluates how well firms promote, pay, hire, and retain employees during a five-year period.

The Index is a valuable tool for benchmarking employer success and workforce opportunities. It shows that employees at top firms earn more and are promoted more often than those at lower-ranked companies.

It also provides critical new transparency for workers, revealing which companies and industries are providing the best wages, promoting their employees, and offering opportunities for first-time job seekers and those without college degrees.

Among key findings from this year’s Index:

• On the Index’s pay metric, employees at the top 100 firms earn an average of 130% more for the same job than those at the bottom 100 firms.
• On the internal promotion metric, employees at the top 100 firms are 150% more likely to be promoted than their counterparts at the bottom 100 firms.
• In hiring, the top 100 employers are 180% more likely to hire workers without a college degree, creating greater opportunity for entry level workers.
• Wages are growing across sectors, with workers in the consumer goods and industrial distribution sectors seeing the greatest increases.
• A new measure evaluating firms against their previous year’s performance finds that only 80 out of 395 companies improved promotion opportunities, while 240 experienced some decline.

To learn more about the methodology, click here.

About The American Opportunity Index

The American Opportunity Index is a groundbreaking ranking of how well companies maximize their internal talent to drive business performance and individual employee growth. Unlike most measures of employer performance, the Index is based on real world outcomes, assessing the progress of millions of workers by tracking the progress of their individual careers. The Index measures hiring and promotion practices, pay, race-and gender parity, and cultural components such as retention and whether companies hire their leaders internally. This ranking is rooted in the belief that when employers enable the full potential of their people—by providing good jobs and opportunities for advancement—their business does better. In recognizing the companies where workers and firms thrive symbiotically, and showing the areas where each company can continue to improve, we seek to spark a new focus on sustainable talent management across American businesses. The American Opportunity Index is a joint project of the Burning Glass Institute, the Managing the Future of Work Project at Harvard Business School, and the Schultz Family Foundation. Explore the Index and see who’s leading the way at: https://americanopportunityindex.org.

About Burning Glass Institute

The Burning Glass Institute believes that everyone deserves meaningful work and the chance to move up. A fully independent non-profit, we advance data-driven research and practice on the future of work and on the future of learning. We work with employers, public agencies, educators, and policymakers to develop solutions that build mobility, opportunity, and equity through skills. Through our expertise in mining new datasets for actionable insight, the Burning Glass Institute’s discourse-shaping research draws attention to pressing problems and frames the potential for new approaches. Through project-based engagement and collectives, we put ideas into practice, bringing forward solutions that are high-impact and replicable. For more information visit https://www.burningglassinstitute.org/.

About The Harvard Business School Managing The Future of Work Project

Harvard Business School’s Project on Managing the Future of Work pursues research that business and policy leaders can put into action to navigate the complex, fast-changing nature of work. The Project’s current research areas focus on the many forces that are redefining the nature of work in the United States as well as in many other advanced and emerging economies: Technology trends like automation and artificial intelligence; Contingent workforces and the gig economy; Workforce demographics and the “care economy”; The middle-skills gap and worker investments; Global talent access and utilization; Spatial tensions between leading urban centers and rural areas. Learn more at: https://www.hbs.edu/managing-the-future-of-work/.

About The Schultz Family Foundation

The Schultz Family Foundation’s mission is to create greater opportunity, accessible to all. Our work is deeply rooted in the lives and values of our co-founders, Sheri and Howard Schultz, who believe talent is everywhere, but opportunity is not. We seek to apply the lessons they have learned over the decades to seed innovations and scale solutions to help young people successfully navigate the transition to adulthood and positively impact the trajectory of their lives. We are investors in unleashing potential and unlocking opportunity, working in partnership with employers, entrepreneurs, non-profits, and governments that share our aspiration of enabling everyone to access the full promise of America. For more information about the Foundation and its work: www.schultzfamilyfoundation.org.

About Cognizant
Cognizant (Nasdaq: CTSH) engineers modern businesses. We help our clients modernize technology, reimagine processes, and transform experiences to stay ahead in our fast-changing world. Together, we're improving everyday life. See how at www.cognizant.com or @cognizant.