How TIME and Statista Determined America's Best Companies of 2026
· Time
TIME and Statista are launching the first edition of "America’s Best Companies 2026," a comprehensive analysis to identify the top-performing companies in the United States. The study is based on three primary dimensions: Employee Satisfaction, Financial Performance, and Sustainability Transparency (ESG).
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Methodology
The first dimension, Employee Satisfaction, is based on survey data from a large sample of approximately 217,000 employees from U.S. companies over the last three years. The evaluation encompassed recommendations of companies as well as evaluations of employers across the dimensions image, atmosphere, working conditions, salary, workplace and equality by verified employees.
The second dimension, Financial Performance, was assessed using data from Statista’s revenue database, which contains company financial data for the last five years. The companies had to meet certain criteria to be considered for the evaluation, including generating a revenue of at least $100 million in 2025. We evaluated financial performance on a variety of metrics, including short-term (2023-2025) and long-term (2021-2025) revenue growth, both in relative and absolute terms, changes in net income, asset growth, and the evolution of the company’s return on assets (ROA) (all 2023-2025).
The third dimension, Sustainability Transparency, was evaluated based on ESG data among standardized KPIs from Statista’s ESG Database and targeted data research. To formulate a comprehensive ESG index, multiple Key Performance Indicators were collected. For the environmental evaluation, this included the 2024 carbon emissions intensity and reduction rate compared to 2022, as well as the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) score. The social dimension assessed the share of women on the board of directors and the existence of a human rights policy. The governance dimension evaluated whether a company had a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) report adhering to the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidelines and a compliance or anti-corruption guideline.
Once the data was collected and evaluated, it was consolidated and weighted within a scoring model. The scores of all three dimensions were added on an equal percentage basis to form the final ranking score of a maximum 100 points. The 1,000 companies with the highest score were awarded as America’s Best Companies 2026 by TIME and Statista.